With war approaching a new flight surgeon and a Navy pilot overcome personal differences to work on solving the problem of altitude sickness which causes blackouts at high altitude...
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
How far would you go to unlock the truth? Set in Cairo during World War II, The Key to Rebecca follows a German spy as he tries to infiltrate the British high command during General Rommel's advance on Egypt. The stakes are high as the relentless struggle for victory is at hand. Based on the best-selling novel.
The point of a good production of Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia is to have a Rosina and a Figaro who will knock your socks off in their respective arias, while holding back enough in all those crescendo ensembles in which the farce plot reaches its several culminations that the other stars get a chance to shine too. Cecilia Bartoli and Gino Quilico give full-blooded enough performances when on stage by themselves that self-effacement seems far from imminent, yet both are capable of less, and give it when it is needed. Of the others, David Kuebler is an attractively raffish Almaviva, while Robert Lloyd turns Basilio into a memorable cameo. Gabriele Ferro is one of the most intelligent of Rossini conductors--he understands the relationship between the pulse of the music and its dramatic function, and he is also outstanding in the delicacy of phrasing, even in climaxes, that ensures that every voice, every instrument, gets the moment of glory Rossini intended. Michael Hampe's solid reliable unfussy production keeps everything moving without drawing attention to itself. The DVD has subtitles in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, as well as trailers for other Arthaus Musik discs. --Roz Kaveney
When released in 1997, The Gingerbread Man was the only John Grisham movie that did not use one of the popular novelist's bestsellers as its inspiration. Rather, it's based on an original screenplay by Grisham that displays the author's familiar flair for Southern characters and settings within a labyrinthine plot propelled by his trademark narrative twists and turns. Sporting a spot-on Georgian accent, Kenneth Branagh plays a Savannah attorney who comes to the assistance of a troubled woman (Embeth Davidtz) and finds himself enmeshed in a scenario involving the woman's father (Robert Duvall) that grows increasingly complex and dangerous, where nothing, of course, is really as it seems. It's a totally absorbing movie made in the modern film noir tradition; what's most interesting here (and most underrated by critics at the time) is the combination of Grisham's mainstream mystery and the offbeat style of maverick director Robert Altman. Despite a battle with executives that nearly caused Altman to disown the film, The Gingerbread Man demonstrates the director's skill in bringing a fresh, characteristically offbeat approach to conventional material, especially in the use of a threatening hurricane to hold the plot in a state of dangerous urgency. Unfortunately overlooked during its theatrical release, this intelligent thriller provides a fine double bill with Francis Coppola's film of Grisham's The Rainmaker. --Jeff Shannon
Season Two, the 1994-95 run, of The X Files was the one where creator Chris Carter, having had a surprise hit when he expected a one-season wonder, started trying to make sense of all the storylines he had thrown into the pile in the first year. Moreover, he had to cope with Gillian Anderson's maternity leave by having Scully get abducted by aliens (back then, a pretty fresh device) for a few episodes and come back strangely altered. The season also inaugurated the tradition of opening ("Little Green Men") and closing ("Anasazi") with the show's worst episodes, both pot-boiling attempts to keep the alien infiltration/government conspiracy balls up in the air while seeming to offer narrative forward-thrusts or revelations.But it's also a show noticeably surer of itself than Season One, with its stars reading from the same page in terms of their characters' relationship and attitudes to the wondrous. Scully's no-longer-workable scepticism finally starts to erode in the face of Mulder's increasingly cracked belief. There are fewer marking-time leftover-monster-of-the-week shows--although we do get a human fluke ("The Host"), vampires ("3"), an invisible rapist ("Excelsius Dei") voodoo ("Fresh Bones")--and the flying-saucer stories at last seem to be going somewhere. The powerful two-episode run ("Duane Barry", "Ascension") features Steve Railsback as Mulder's possible future, an FBI agent burned out after a UFO abduction who has become a hostage-taking terrorist, which climaxes with Scully's disappearance into the light. The standout episode is also a stand-alone--"Humbug"--the first and still most successful of the show's self-parodies (written by Darin Morgan, who had played the Flukeman in "The Host"), in which the agents investigate a murder in a circus freakshow, allowing the actors to make fun of the mannerisms they have earnestly built up in a run of solemn, even somnolent, explorations of the murk. Other worthy efforts: "Aubrey", about genetic memory; "Irresistible", a rare (and creepy) straight psycho-chiller with little paranormal content; and "The Calusari", a good ghost/mystery. Rising deputy characters include Nicholas Lea as the perfidious Krycek and Brian Thompson as the shapeshifting alien bounty hunters. Notable guest stars: Charles Martin Smith, C.C.H. Pounder, Leland Orser, Terry O'Quinn, Bruce Weitz, Daniel Benzali, John Savage, Vincent Schiavelli, Tony Shalhoub. --Kim NewmanOn the DVD: The individual episode discs have a small selection of deleted scenes, foreign language clips and behind-the-scenes footage, but the bulk of the extra material is on the final disc. There's not a lot to get to grips with, but what there is consists of a 14-minute documentary about the making of Season Two, with contributions from Chris Carter, various directors, writers and actors (but not the two principals); Carter talking briefly about each episode in turn; a series of short TV spots and pieces about the show's FX and secondary characters; and three very short behind-the-scenes glimpses, one of which has the self-explanatory title "Gillian eats a cricket". There's also a DVD-ROM utility with Web links and a game. --Mark Walker
A military plane carrying a secret bio-chemical warfare agent crashes near Evans City Pennsylvania releasing a deadly virus into the local water supply. Highly contagious the virus quickly begins to infect the town's residents producing homicidal insanity in its victims. As government scientists work to find an antidote the town is forcibly quarantined by the US military. Clad in protective suits troops of soldiers move in intending to control and cover up the situation and to
Guncrazy
Noel Coward's great British war film made at the height of World War II in 1942 tells the story of a naval destroyer and its crew as they fight for their lives in a life raft after their ship is sunk.
Very few films achieve subliminal greatness with cross-cultural impact, but Walkabout is one of those films--a visual tone poem that functions more as an allegory than a conventionally plotted adventure. Considered a cult favourite for years, Nicolas Roeg's 1971 film centres upon two British children who are rescued in the Australian outback by a young aborigine. Through exquisite cinematography and a story of subtle human complexity, the film continues to resonate on many thematic and artistic levels. Just as Roeg intended, it is a cautionary morality tale in which the limitations and restrictions of civilisation become painfully clear when the two children (played by Jenny Agutter and Roeg's young son, Lucien John) cannot survive without the aborigine's assistance. They become primitives themselves, if only temporarily, while the young aborigine proves ultimately and tragically unable to join the "family" of civilisation. With its story of two worlds colliding, Walkabout now seems like a film for the ages, hypnotic and open to several compelling levels of interpretation. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Directed by BAFTA-nominee Martyn Friend (New Tricks) and produced by BAFTA-nominee John Harris (The Singing Detective), the series also proved popular in the US, where it was nominated for a CableACE award in 1985 for Best Movie or Mini-series. Shackleton was shot on location in Greenland and features cinematography from BAFTA-winner David Whitson (The Voyage of Charles Darwin), who is no stranger to creating atmospheric journeys of historical figures. The chilling original music score was composed by Francis Shaw. Undeterred by the dangers faced by Roald Amundsen (first to reach the South Pole) and Robert Falcon Scott and his team (who perished on their treacherous journey), Shackleton, in 1914, chooses to lead a team on their famous journey aboard the Endurance. However, when disaster strikes and the ship is trapped and crushed by pack-ice, Shackleton and five of his men must embark on a desperate 800-mile journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia with only the James Caird, a 20-foot lifeboat, to protect them against the furious Southern Ocean. Based on the true stories, recorded in Shackleton's own journals which he kept during his expeditions, this series does not shy away from the harsh realities the men faced in the Antarctic from dwindling supplies to emergency amputations and provides a gripping account of the dangers, frustrations and suffering the determined explorers endured. Unlike recent film and TV adaptations of the story, the BBC's 1983 drama delivers a widely acknowledged true account of the events as they unfolded. It opens with Shackleton planning the expedition and reveals the challenges he faced in finding sponsors. It presents the perilous journey on the James Caird and the South Georgia mountain crossing in keeping with journal records. And, unlike later versions, the BBC's Shackleton delves into his complex relationships with those around him as they all battle to succeed and survive. David Schofield stars as Ernest Shackleton in a remarkable early performance. He would later go on to star in the epic blockbusters: Gladiator, The Walking Dead and Pirates of the Caribbean. David Rodigan (A Woman called Moses) is outstanding as Shackleton's trusted deputy Frank Wild. This critically acclaimed, fact-based drama will definitely appeal to an audience interested in historical biopics and true-life adventures. Generally, fans of brilliantly cast and well-written drama with high production values will be thrilled to hear of Shackleton's long-awaited DVD release.
John Thaw stars in this critically acclaimed BBC drama based on the wartime career of Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris the Commander in chief of Bomber Command from 1942-1945.
In 1847, the United States was a land of pioneers, of gold-starved Americans making their way west.
Charlie's Angels: Cameron Diaz Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu are Charlies Angels - a trio of elite private investigators who with the latest in high-tech gadgets martial arts techniques and a vast array of disguises unleash their state of the art skills on land sea and air. Their goal to track down a kidnapped billionaire-to-be and keep his top-secret voice identification software out of his lethal hands. Aided by their faithful lieutenant Bosley (Bill Murray) and u
Based on the internationally best-selling novel by Jonas Jonasson the unlikely story of a 100-year-old man who decides it's not too late to start over. After a long and eventful life Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he's still in good health and in one day he turns 100. A big celebration is in the works but Allan really isn't interested and decides to escape. He climbs out the window in his slippers and embarks on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey.
Truffaut's first feature-length film met with great approval from his critics. A somwhat autobiographical story of Truffaut's own childhood The 400 Blows tells the story of Antoine Doinel a 14-year-old schoolboy. Antoine is not a good student and always seems to be in trouble at school. At home he is disregarded by his parents who have better things to do. He starts to play truant and spends a lot of his time in cinemas. But he soon finds that his parents will not tolerate this behaviour.
Based on the play by Tennessee Williams and scripted by Francis Ford Coppola (amongst others) 'This Property Is Condemned' features an outstanding performance from Robert Redford as Owen Legate; the man sent to shut down much of Dodson town's railway. Owen meets Alva a beautiful girl whose affections are keenly sought after in Dodson. Whilst axing jobs Owen tries to woo Alva in an attempt to whisk her off to New Orleans so they can start a new life together. Now Alva must make
Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made, Stanley Kubrick's cold war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. Dr. Strangelove is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed with "the purity of precious bodily fluids," mounts his singular campaign against Communism by ordering a squadron of B-52 bombers to attack the Soviet Union. The Soviets counter the threat with a so-called "Doomsday Device," and the world hangs in the balance while the US president (Peter Sellers) engages in hilarious hot-line negotiations with his Soviet counterpart. Sellers also plays a British military attaché and the mad bomb-maker Dr. Strangelove; George C. Scott is outrageously frantic as General Buck Turgidson, whose presidential advice consists mainly of panic and statistics about "acceptable losses." With dialogue ("You can't fight here! This is the war room!") and images (Slim Pickens' character riding the bomb to oblivion) that have become a part of our cultural vocabulary, Kubrick's film regularly appears on critics' lists of the all-time best. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com --This text refers to another version of this video.
A by-the-numbers action flick featuring a stern Arnold Schwarzenegger, Raw Deal has all the traditional traits of the genre. Schwarzenegger is a disgraced former FBI agent who winds up as sheriff of a backwater Southern town. He is given a chance to reclaim his job when the head of the Bureau offers him reinstatement if he'll go undercover to capture the mob boss responsible for killing his son. Schwarzenegger must get close enough to gain the trust of the gangster without being discovered as a mole, while gathering enough evidence to take him down. One of Schwarzenegger's early films, in which he honed his persona, Raw Deal offers up the usual quotient of gun battles and tough talk, with a trace of self-deprecating humour from its star, making it reasonably worthwhile entertainment. --Robert Lane
A mesmerizing meditation on the mysterious nature of identity, Lost Highway, DAVID LYNCH's seventh feature film, is one of the filmmaker's most potent cinematic dreamscapes. Starring PATRICIA ARQUETTE and BILL PULLMAN, the film expands the horizons of the medium, taking its audience on a journey through the unknown and the unknowable. As this postmodern noir detours into the realm of science fiction, it becomes apparent that the only certainty is uncertainty. Product Features New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director David Lynch, with new 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack Alternate uncompressed stereo soundtrack Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch, a feature-length 1997 documentary by Toby Keeler featuring Lynch and his collaborators Angelo Badalamenti, Peter Deming, Barry Gifford, Mary Sweeney, and others, along with on-set footage from Lost Highway Reading by Lynch and critic Kristine McKenna of excerpts from their 2018 book, Room to Dream Archival interviews with Lynch and actors Patricia Arquette, Bill Pullman, and Robert Loggia English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing PLUS: Excerpts from an interview with Lynch from the 2005 edition of filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley's book Lynch on Lynch
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