When Harlem P.I John Shaft first appeared on the movie scene, he was a 'shut your mouth' detective to reckon with, a fact underscored by Isaac Hayes' Oscar - winning Best Original Song (1971). Richard Roundtree plays the hard-hitting, street- smart title role, hunting for a kidnap victim in Shaft (1971) and seeking a friend's murderer in Shaft's Big Score! - mixing it up with mob thugs each time. Finally, there's Shaft in Africa, with our hero bringing down a slavery cartel. Shaft's the name. Excitement's the game! Special Features: Behind The Scenes Documentary Soul In Cinema: Filming Shaft On Location Shaft: The Killing (1973 TV Episode) Theatrical Trailers
In New York City the brother of infamous Nazi war criminal Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) is killed in a car accident. Shortly thereafter members of a covert US government group called 'The Division' who are investigating the incident begin to be murdered one by one. When Doc Levy (Roy Scheider) a 'Division' agent is the latest to be attacked his brother Babe (Dustin Hoffman) witnesses his death and unwittingly becomes the pawn in a deadly game in which former SS dentist
A battle of action and wits in a World War II prison camp where the Fuhrer's scheme for looting a treasure-laden island off Greece is under way. Prisoners of war labour under the eye of the camp's Austrian Commandment Major Otto Hecht as they dig up priceless Greek art. Zeno the island's resistance leader and his woman Eleana scheme to defeat the occupiers. Zeno and his men clash with the Germans to save the lives of condemned prisoners and try to locate a submarine oil supply dep
Sometimes the most unlikely people become heroes. Based on the true story of a teenager with a facial deformity from a rare disorder that no child has been known to survive. Cher won Best Actress Award at Cannes for her performance as Rocky's mother in this emotional and spirited drama.
It wasn't until the beginning of Stargate SG-1's fourth season that fans knew to take the Replicator threat seriously. The spidery nasties had only seemed like one of many new enemies introduced in previous years. But when the one seemingly omnipotent backbone of the galaxy was asking Earth for help, clearly we were in real trouble! In fact, the team's list of enemies expanded and got far more complicated this year. Proving without a shadow of a doubt that this is science fiction, the Russians reveal they have their own Stargate program and ask the Americans for help. This twist allows for exploration of all the political machinations occurring behind the scenes of the SG-C, all of which appear to stem from the embittered Senator Kinsey (Ronny Cox). There were quite a few Earth-based stories in the year, but not all the new enemies were originally local. Willie Garson comically guest-starred as Martin, a geekily suspicious guy with too much knowledge of the Stargate. More sinister was an old flame of Daniel's turning into something far more painful than an old wound (thanks to an ancient Egyptian curse). Thankfully, the writers hadn't forgotten the importance of one-off storylines too. In "Upgrades" the team learns a lesson in abuse of power. In "The Other Side" (featuring DS9's Rene Auberjonois) they learn about blind trust. In "Scorched Earth" a dangerous claim for a planet's ownership means they learn to value Daniel's contribution to the group dynamic. If only this last lesson were learned better, season 5 might not have ended up as muddled as it did. --Paul Tonks
Set on one block of Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy Do or Die neighbourhood, at the height of summer, this 1989 masterpiece by Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman) confirmed him as a writer and filmmaker of peerless vision and passionate social engagement. Over the course of a single day, the easy-going interactions of a cast of unforgettable characters Da Mayor, Mother Sister, Mister Señor Love Daddy, Tina, Sweet Dick Willie, Buggin Out, Radio Raheem, Sal, Pino, Vito, and Lee's Mookie among them give way to heated confrontations as tensions rise along racial fault lines, ultimately exploding into violence. Punctuated by the anthemic refrain of Public Enemy's Fight the Power, Do the Right Thing is a landmark in American cinema, as politically and emotionally charged and as relevant now as when it first hit the big screen.
While the Black Power movement was reshaping America, trailblazing director GORDON PARKS (The Learning Tree) made this groundbreaking blockbuster, which helped launch the blaxploitation era and gave the screen a new kind of badder-than-bad action hero in John Shaft (Embassy's RICHARD ROUNDTREE, in a career-defining role), a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers. After Shaft is recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem mob boss (Amazing Grace's MOSES GUNN) from Italian gangsters, he finds himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating uptown vs. downtown turf war. A vivid time capsule of seventies Manhattan in all its gritty glory that has inspired sequels and multimedia reboots galore, the original Shaft is studded with indelible elementsfrom Roundtree's sleek leather fashions to the iconic funk and soul score by ISAAC HAYES. Special Features New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Alternate uncompressed stereo soundtrack remastered with creative input from Isaac Hayes III In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features Shaft's Big Score!, the 1972 follow-up to Shaft by director Gordon Parks New documentary on the making of Shaft featuring curator Rhea L. Combs, film scholar Racquel J. Gates, filmmaker Nelson George, and music scholar Shana L. Redmond Behind-the-scenes program featuring Parks, actor Richard Roundtree, and musician Isaac Hayes Archival interviews with Hayes, Parks, and Roundtree ¢ New interview with costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi New program on the Black detective and the legacy of John Shaft, featuring scholar Kinohi Nishikawa and novelist Walter Mosley A Complicated Man: The Shaft Legacy (2019) Behind-the-scenes footage from Shaft's Big Score! Trailers English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing PLUS: An essay by film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri
This original and hippest version of Shaft cruised onto cinema screens in 1971. John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is an African-American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree's uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Director Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) seems fond of certain detective genre cliché (e.g., the hero walking into his low-rent office and finding a hood waiting to talk with him), but he and Roundtree make those moments their own. Shaft produced a couple of sequels, a follow-up television series, and a remake starring Samuel L Jackson, but none had the impact this movie did. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
Murphy's Law is a thoroughly unpleasant 1986 thriller stars Charles Bronson as a cop systematically framed for one murder after another. The killings, though, turn out to be the work of a female nutcase (Carrie Snodgress) he had once sent away to prison. Everyone involved in this leans on the atrocity-and-revenge formula, particularly Bronson and director J Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone), two Hollywood guys who once upon a time made plenty of classic films. Snodgress's performance is unhinged, interesting but hard to watch, as we never really got to know her onscreen after Diary of a Mad Housewife. Just think of this movie as having come from the same creepy planet as the Death Wish series. --Tom Keogh
Thieves' Highway was made during a remarkable run of noir pictures that confirmed its director, Jules Dassin, as one of the genre's major forces. Following on from Brute Force and The Naked City, with Night and the City and Rififi soon to follow, it more than deserves its place in such hallowed company. Returning from the war to discover his father has been crippled in an altercation with a brutish mob-connected kingpin, Nick Garcos puts aside thoughts of settling down and instead focuses them on revenge. He buys an old army surplus truck and hits the road a 36-hour non-stop to San Francisco and, he hopes, a little justice Starring Richard Conte as Garcos and Lee J. Cobb as the object of his hate-filled intentions, Thieves' Highway is as tough as film noir gets. Adapting his own novel, A.I. Bezzerides (who would later bring Kiss Me Deadly to the big screen) created a slice of pure pulp poetry.
An overworked air traffic controller takes a well-earned seaside holiday. He soon discovers that with his wife three kids a dog and the inflated ego of a devious tycoon to cope with relaxation is the last thing he's likely to get!
In New York City the brother of infamous Nazi war criminal Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) is killed in a car accident. Shortly thereafter members of a covert US government group called 'The Division' who are investigating the incident begin to be murdered one by one. When Doc Levy (Roy Scheider) a 'Division' agent is the latest to be attacked his brother Babe (Dustin Hoffman) witnesses his death and unwittingly becomes the pawn in a deadly game in which former SS denti
A classic film noir from the 1940's.The FBI files are filled with many lurid crime stories. One case in particular baffles FBI Inspector Briggs (Lloyd Nolan). It's the murders of a housewife and a bank guard, with no connection between the victims - except the murder weapon. Determined to solve the case, Briggs sends his best agent undercover to penetrate the inner circle of a notorious gang run by up-and-coming crime boss Stiles, played by Richard Widmark in one of his most chilling performances. Everything goes according to plan, until an informant tips off Stiles...
The British spy with a licence to kill takes on his dark underworld double, a classy assassin who kills with golden bullets at £1 million a hit. Roger Moore, in his second outing as James Bond, meets Christopher Lee's Scaramanga, one of the most magnetic villains in the entire series, in this entertaining but rather wan entry in the 007 sweepstakes. Bond's globetrotting search takes him to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and finally China, where Scaramanga turns his island retreat into a twisted theme park for a deadly game of wits between the gunmen, moderated by Scaramanga's diminutive man Friday Nick Nack (Fantasy Island's Hervé Villechaize). Britt Ekland does her best as an embarrassingly inept Bond girl, a clumsy, dim agent named Mary Goodnight who looks fetching in a bikini, while Maud Adams is Scaramanga's tough but haunted lover and assistant. Clifton James, the redneck sheriff from Live and Let Die, makes an ill-advised appearance as a racist tourist. He briefly teams up with 007 in what is otherwise the film's highlight, a high-energy chase through the crowded streets of Bangkok that climaxes with a breathtaking mid-air corkscrew jump. Bond and company are let down by a lazy script, but Moore balances the overplayed humour with a steely performance and Lee's charm and enthusiasm makes Scaramanga a cool, deadly, and thoroughly enchanting adversary. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com
Hold That Ghost: Two bumbling service station attendants are left as the sole beneficiaries in a gangster's will. Their trip to claim their fortune is sidetracked when they are stranded in a haunted house along with several other strangers. In The Navy: Russ Raymond America's number one crooner disappears and joins the Navy under the name Tommy Halstead. Dorothy Roberts a magazine journalist is intent on finding out what happened to Russ and she tries everything sh
Set in and around San Francisco, Thieves' Highway is a tale of an American G.I., Nick, who comes home from World War II to find his father, a produce truck driver, paralysed after a fight with a crooked truck driver. So instead of the young vet building a new life for himself and settling down with his girl, Nick gets embroiled in his father's feud. To get back at the thug, Nick tries to lay a trap. But his hunger for revenge changes his personality to the point where he risks losing everything that ever mattered to him.
John Drake is a special agent in the deadly world of international espionage and intrigue. A master in his field he is free to go wherever duty calls. Danger Man does not simply attract danger he thrives on it. Episode titles: The Key View From the Villa Find and Return Time To Kill Under the Lake The Journey Ends Halfway Position of Trust The Sisters An Affair Of State Deadline Bury The Dead The Girl In Pink Pyjamas Sabotage The Traitor The Nurse The Blue Veil The Lovers The Sanctuary The Deputy Coyannis Story The Brothers Colonel Rodriguez The Relaxed Informer Find and Destroy The Prisoner The Lonely Chair Dead Man Walks The Contessa Josetta The Island The Conspirators Name Date and Place The Leak The Honeymooners The Girl Who Liked GI's Hired Assassin The Gallows Tree The Vacation The Trap The Actor.
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
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