A much-loved British classic Michael Anderson's 1954 drama captures the tension and bravery of an audacious raid on the centre of Nazi Germany's industrial complex and the quintessentially English combination of inventiveness and dogged determination. Split into two distinct sections the film deals first with the fraught but ultimately successful development of a new weapon by Dr. Barnes N. Wallis (Michael Redgrave). The second and pacier section deals with the mission itself during the British raid on the Ruhr Dams and its associated costs for the enemy and for the British airmen. Adapted by R.C. Sherriff from Paul Brickhill's book Enemy Coast Ahead and featuring superlative special effects photography by Gilbert Taylor (to say nothing of Eric Coates' stirring theme tune) The Dam Busters was Britain's biggest box-office success of 1955. Shot in black and white to allow the integration of original footage of the bomb trials the film boasts a 'gritty' documentary-style reality.
Dr Barnes Wallis was possessed with a seemingly crazy idea - the creation of a bouncing bomb designed to destroy the Ruhr dams and paralyse the enemy's industrial nerve centre. He fought persistent scepticism and disbelief that such a feat was possible though even with the matchless skill of RAF Wing Commander Guy Gibson and his squadron could such a mission succeed?
This special DVD release contains two unique productions. The first is the brand-new drama production WHITE WITCH OF DEVIL S END starring DAMARIS HAYMAN, who reprises her role as Olive Hawthorne from the DOCTOR WHO story THE DAEMONS. With a blend of dramatic monologue enhanced with visualisations and sound design to develop and tell the stories, the drama is an anthology of tales following the magical life of Olive Hawthorne, from childhood to her final days as the protector of Devil s End. Drawing on a rich heritage and appreciation of witchcraft and fokelore, the stories bring Olive's history to life, pitting her against vampire, succubus, fae, daemonic influence and more - as Guardian of Devil's End, she must do what she must to protect the village ... but what happens when she reaches the end of her life? Who will protect the townsfolk then? The second is the long-awaited DVD release of the classic documentary RETURN TO DEVIL S END . Filmed around the village of Aldbourne in 1992, this marvellous production stars JON PERTWEE (The Third Doctor), NICHOLAS COURTNEY (The Brigadier), RICHARD FRANKLIN (Capt. Yates), JOHN LEVENE (Sgt. Benton) and THE DAEMONS director, CHRISTOPHER BARRY. NICHOLAS BRIGGS (currently the voice of the Daleks in DOCTOR WHO), takes the cast and director on a trip around the locations, deftly gleaning stories and anecdotes about filming the classic DOCTOR WHO series in 1971. Including interviews with villagers and rare archive film and photos ... this documentary is rightly considered one of the best behind-the-scenes look at the making of DOCTOR WHO ever produced. Both discs are packed with bonus features, making this a totally unique production! PLUS! A third bonus disc containing video of conventions held in Aldbourne to celebrate one of DOCTOR WHO s most fondly remembered stories.
Before Harrison Ford assumed the mantle of playing Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan hero in Patriot Games, Alec Baldwin took a swing at the character in this John McTiernan film and hit one to the fence. If less instantly sympathetic than Ford, Baldwin is in some respects more interesting and nuanced as Ryan, and drawing comparisons between both actors' performances can make for some interesting post-movie discussion. That aside, The Hunt for Red October stands alone as a uniquely exciting adventure with a fantastic co-star: Sean Connery as a Russian nuclear submarine captain attempting to defect to the West on his ship. Ryan must figure out his true motives for approaching the US. McTiernan (Predator, Die Hard) made an exceptionally handsome movie here with action sequences that really do take one's breath away. --Tom Keogh
This stunning box set features 3 of the finest movies to feature the 'First Lady of Film' Bette Davis. All About Eve (1950): It's all about women.... and their men! From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door Eve Horrington (Anne Baxter) moves relentlessly towards her goal: taking the reins of power from the great actress Margo Channing (Bette Davies). The cunning Eve manoeuvres her way into Margo's Broadway role becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in
A BRAND NEW RESTORATION COMMEMORATING THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ORIGINAL WWII RAID A much-loved British classic, Michael Anderson's 1955 drama captures the tension and bravery of an audacious raid on the center of Nazi Germany's industrial complex and the quintessentially English combination of inventiveness and dogged determination. Split into two distinct sections, the film deals first with the fraught, but the ultimately successful development of a new bomb, by Dr. Barnes N. Wallis (Michael Redgrave). The second deals with the mission itself during the British raid on the Ruhr Dams, and its associated costs for the enemy and for the British airmen. Adapted by R.C. Sherriff from Paul Brickhill's book Enemy Coast Ahead and featuring superlative special effects photography by Gilbert Taylor (to say nothing of Eric Coates' stirring theme tune), The Dam Busters was Britain's biggest box office the success of 1955. Collector's Edition Includes a 64-page booklet with brand new essays, and photographs, plus a rare print of an ariel photograph of the Mohne dam post raid, signed by the original 617 squadron Features: RAF poster of the Chastise Lancaster's
Based on a true story this film tells of the tireless efforts of a US naval ship crew to save an abandoned Korean / American baby from the post-Korean War political fallout.
Something of a cult item among British war movies (and brilliantly spoofed a few years back by a lager ad), The Dam Busters turns a minor World War II incident into a saga of heroic stiff-upper-lippery in the classic British style. A bombing raid is proposed on a strategically vital Ruhr dam, but its position is inaccessible. Enter eccentric inventor Dr Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave in best daffy professor mode) who comes up with a genius idea--a bomb that will bounce on water like a skimmed pebble. Naturally the top brass pooh-pooh it, but gallant Wing Commander Guy Gibson (Richard Todd) is persuaded, and between them flyer and boffin forge ahead. The touches of carefully understated emotion now verge on self-parody, but it's hard not to get caught up in the narrative sweep, especially when the bombers take off on their mission and Eric Coates' stirring march hits the soundtrack. The modelwork, state-of-the-art for its early 1950s period, still looks impressive, and the death of Gibson's beloved black Labrador (embarrassingly called Nigger) is a three-hanky moment to rival the shooting of Bambi's mum. --Philip Kemp
Can a kid from Kansas come to New York to conquer the business world and maneuver his way from the mailroom to the boardroom in a matter of weeks? Michael J. Fox proves it can be done in this very funny lampoon of corporate business life. Fresh out of college he's determined to climb New York's corporate ladder in record time by masquerading as an up-and-coming executive even though he's really the new mail boy. However Fox's plans begin to go awry when the boss's wife falls in love with him and he falls in love with a junior executive who also happens to be the boss's mistress...
John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has gone to ground at a Buddhist temple in Thailand when Colonel Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna) seeks him out for a new mission: supplying weapons to oppressed rebels in Afghanistan. When Rambo refuses, Trautman leaves for Afghanistan without him but is quickly taken hostage by Soviet forces. With his friend facing imminent death, Rambo volunteers to mount a solo rescue attempt Features: Rambo takes the 80s Part 3 Full Circle A Hero's Journey Rambo's Survival Hardware Alternate Beginning Deleted Scenes Interview with Sylvester Stallone Afghanistan - A Land in Crisis Guts and Glory Behind the Scenes The Restoration Trautman & Rambo How to become Rambo Part 3 Original Trailer Original TV Spots
Exclusive Art by Matt Ferguson Horror-meister John Carpenter (Halloween, Escape from New York) teams Kurt Russell's outstanding performance with incredible visuals to build this chilling version of the classic The Thing. In the winter of 1982, a twelve-man research team at a remote Antarctic research station discovers an alien buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Once unfrozen, the form-changing alien wreaks havoc, creates terror and becomes one of them. Collectors Edition Includes 1 x 4K UHD Disc of The Thing (1982) 1 x Blu-Ray Disc of The Thing (2011); 1 x Official Motion Picture Soundtrack Disc by Ennio Morricone 1x Matt Ferguson's The Thing Poster 1x Art Booklet (includes production notes, excerpt of the script, behind the scenes photos, early concepts) Bonus Content Feature Commentary with Director John Carpenter and Kurt Russell John Carpenter's The Thing: Terror Takes Shape Outtakes Theatrical Trailer
Based on Terry McMillan's best-selling novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back, stars Angela Bassett as a 40-year-old, Manhattan stock trader and single mother whose static life gets a jolt during a vacation with her pal (Whoopi Goldberg) in Jamaica. Sparks fly when Bassett meets a 20-year-old stud (Taye Diggs) who has an ambivalent career path but a great body and lots of sexual energy to burn. After some prodding by Goldberg's warm-funny secondary character, Bassett gets it on with the fellow--and proceeds to worry about what she's doing with a man half her age. The film is most enjoyable in its sunny, exotic early scenes and becomes more formulaic once the unlikely couple transports their will-we-stay-together-or-won't-we tensions back to the Big Apple. But director Kevin Rodney Sullivan goes out of his way to make a movie unabashedly thick with fantasy and wish-fulfilment for female audiences (it's Diggs who reveals a lot more flesh than the regal Bassett). This is a Saturday-night movie all around. --Tom Keogh
When you hire Tom Cruise to be in your Tom Cruise movie, there's never a question that you're going to get your money's worth. The movie may not be worth the expense, but as a professional who delivers 100 percent 100 percent of the time, Cruise will give the proceedings his undivided attention. In Jack Reacher Cruise plays the title character with complete gusto, and even though it ends up a pretty run-of-the-mill crime drama, his presence and commitment elevates this violent, bloody, and attractively atmospheric movie to the level of, well, a reliably pleasurable Tom Cruise experience. Jack Reacher is the protagonist in a series of popular novels by Lee Child. There was some sniping among fans that Cruise bears no resemblance to Child's Reacher, a burly, shadowy former army policeman who has moved into the private investigator business--but mostly for Cruise himself. No matter; as a leading man, Cruise is always going to be himself anyway, so the ghostlike qualities built in to his character take on their own mythical qualities that allow both Cruise and Reacher to get the job done. In a somewhat unsettling opening sequence that shows a lone gunman killing a handful of seemingly random people at a public park, the mystery is born and Reacher materialises to help the police sort things out. Again seemingly, the killer has been positively identified and apprehended and is dead-to-rights guilty. But this former army sniper asks for Jack Reacher to suss out the deeper crazy truth. Reacher and the alleged gunman have a history that dates back to their military service when Reacher investigated him for heinously murdering civilians during a psychotic break, a crime that he really did commit, but for which he went unpunished due to one of those pesky legal technicalities. Nevertheless, Reacher's goal is justice, and his investigative instincts tell him this new crime points in an entirely different direction. There are several sequences that play brilliantly in the context of Reacher's skill as a killing machine on his own. One takes place in the close confines of a tiny hallway and bathroom where Reacher faces down a posse of thugs armed with guns and a baseball bat, besting them all in a flurry of acrobatic brutality. He also single-handedly beats up a gang of toughs in the alley behind a bar. But the movie's high point is an excellent chase scene between two roaring muscle cars on the dark streets of Pittsburgh (the city itself plays a great role throughout), with Cruise clearly and expertly handling the wheel himself. Though somewhat convoluted, the plot is well conceived and the large cast supports Cruise's commanding presence nicely. Richard Jenkins and Robert Duvall do their usual excellent work, though it is Werner Herzog as a wildly over-the-top villain who makes things positively gleeful in his few scenes. Of course it always comes back to Tom Cruise and his dedication to the movie's greater good that makes Jack Reacher so enjoyable, even when its reach exceeds its grasp. --Ted Fry
Scientists drug and capture the creature who becomes enamoured with the head scientist's female assistant. The lonely creature escapes and kidnaps the object of his affection. leaving it up to the chief scientist to rescue his assistant and cast the ominous creature back to the depths from which he came.
Viking brothers Rolfe (Widmark) and Orm (Russ Tamblyn) steal the Norse king's funeral ship, as well as his beautiful daughter Gerda (Beba Loncar), and head off in search of the fabled 'Mother of Voices,' a huge solid-gold bell and battle a maelstrom, a mutinous crew and vengeful Moorish troops...
A BRAND NEW RESTORATION COMMEMORATING THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ORIGINAL WWII RAID A much-loved British classic, Michael Anderson's 1955 drama captures the tension and bravery of an audacious raid on the center of Nazi Germany's industrial complex and the quintessentially English combination of inventiveness and dogged determination. Split into two distinct sections, the film deals first with the fraught, but the ultimately successful development of a new bomb, by Dr. Barnes N. Wallis (Michael Redgrave). The second deals with the mission itself during the British raid on the Ruhr Dams, and its associated costs for the enemy and for the British airmen. Adapted by R.C. Sherriff from Paul Brickhill's book Enemy Coast Ahead and featuring superlative special effects photography by Gilbert Taylor (to say nothing of Eric Coates' stirring theme tune), The Dam Busters was Britain's biggest box office the success of 1955
It is the Cold War. The world stands on the brink of nuclear catastrophe as tensions simmer between the US and the Soviet Union. When a US bomber is accidentally ordered to drop a nuclear bomb on Moscow it looks as if the fateful decision for all-out war will be taken by both sides. Having past the point of no return Colonel Jack Grady (George Clooney) pilots his bomber into Soviet territory refusing to yield to verbal commands to turn back. The U.S. President (Richard Dreyfuss)
This true life tale tells of a reporter drawn to a small West Virginia town to investigate a series of strange events, including psychic visions and the appearance of bizarre entities.
3:10 to Yuma is a tight, taut Western in the High Noon tradition. Struggling rancher and family man Van Heflin sneaks captured outlaw Glenn Ford out from under the eyes of his gang and nervously awaits the prison train. Adapted from an Elmore Leonard story, this tense thriller is boiled down to its essential elements: a charming and cunning criminal, an initially reluctant hero whose courage and resolution hardens along the way and a waiting game that pits them in a battle of wills and wits. Glenn Ford practically steals the film in one of his best performances ever: calm, cool and confident, he's a ruthless killer with polite manners and an honourable streak. Director Delmer Daves (Broken Arrow) sets it all in a harsh, parched frontier of empty landscapes, deserted towns and dust, creating a brittle quiet that threatens to snap into violence at any moment. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com
Hard to imagine now but long before Richard Attenborough became Lord Dickie, benevolent patriarch of British moviedom, he specialised in playing weaselly little thugs and punks. Brighton Rock, adapted from Graham Greene's classic novel, offered him one of his best early roles as Pinkie, juvenile leader of a seedy gang of racetrack crooks in the Sussex seaside town. When it seems an innocent young waitress may know too much about one of their killings, Pinkie decides to keep her quiet by marrying her. But in Greene's world of guilt-ridden Catholicism and inexorable doom, it was never going to be that easy. Is the famous twist ending a cop-out? That depends just how much irony you read into it. But the Brighton atmosphere, all tawdry gaiety shot through with a crackling undercurrent of fear, is so vivid you can smell it. Made with a cool, dispassionate eye by the Boulting Brothers (before they turned jokey with the likes of I'm Alright Jack, for instance) and superbly shot by Harry Waxman, this is one of Britain's few great contributions to the noir thriller cycle. Young Dickie, twitchy, vicious and terrified, is a revelation--and don't miss William Hartnell, the original Dr Who, as his cynical sidekick. --Philip Kemp
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