Charley Varrick (Walter Matthau) is a former stunt-pilot who makes his living robbing small banks in the American Southwest. His latest heist sees him unwittingly steal from the local mafia, setting a psychotic hit-man on his trail and unleashing a maelstrom of violence and destruction. Directed by the great Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry), Charley Varrick is one of the best thrillers of the 70s: action-packed, memorably lurid and gleefully unsentimental Extras: Limited edition remaster Original mono audio Last of the Independents: Don Siegel and the Making of Charley Varrick' (2015, 72 mins): a feature-length documentary on the making of the film The Guardian Lecture with Don Siegel (1973, tbc mins): archival audio recording of an interview conducted by Tony Sloman at London's National Film Theatre The Guardian Lecture with Walther Matthau (1988, tbc mins): archival audio recording of an interview at London's National Film Theatre Super 8 version: original cut-down home cinema presentation Original theatrical trailer Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by author and critic Richard Combs, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and historic articles on the film UK premiere on Blu-ray Limited Edition of 3,000 copies
When a maid is accidentally hit by a car and killed her young orphaned daughter is forced to live with the snooty couple her mother used to work for. A custody battle soon ensues between an aviator who adores the little girl and the couple's crotchety Uncle Ned.
In this turbulent swashbuckler Cecil B. DeMille presents a tale of daring piracy and hot-blooded love! 1840s Key West is filled with salvage businesses thriving on the cargo of wrecked ships. Ship owner Loxi Claiborne suspects salvager King Cutler of foul play since he's always first on the scene at a wreck. Meanwhile Loxi's suitor Captain Jack Stuart is another suspect - at least to jealous lawyer Steve Tolliver. Who will be found guilty - and how - hinges on some amazing developments. Along with the star-studded cast (including Robert Preston and Susan Hayward) this glorious sea spectacle has stars of another kind. There are huge clipper ships gliding in the mist storms splintering them on the rocks and a giant squid in a memorable underwater battle. With Given DeMille's robust direction it all adds up to an Oscar for Special Effects
Dan Aykroyd is running the asylum and ruling the airwaves as a mental patient turned talk-radio shrink in this Michael Ritchie comedy of loony proportions co-starring Charles Grodin Donna Dixon Walter Matthau and Chevy Chase. When asylum inmate John Burns (Aykroyd) intercepts a call to his psychiatrist he brashly impersonates the good doctor. And he does such a good job that he's given an offer to fill in for a stressed-out Beverly Hills celebrity psychologist (Grodin) as the hos
In case you'd forgotten, My Beautiful Laundrette will remind you of those mid-80s days when Thatcherism ruled the earth (or so it seemed) and money was king. Stephen Frears' low-budget realisation of Hanif Kureishi's subversively critical play captures the contradictions of that time in a way that's as fresh today as when it was new. Omar's wheeler-dealer uncle, Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey), sums it up when he says, "In this damn country, which we hate and love, you can get anything you want". He sets up Omar (Gordon Warnecke) with a rundown laundrette and the instruction to make it a success, which Omar temporarily does, with the help of his childhood friend Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis). When the film first came out, it was the gay content that dominated the column inches, whereas now it seems a sensitive and multi-faceted summation of its decade, exploring social, ethnic and sexual issues and contradictions. Bringing together two such different characters as Omar--Asian, ambitious, for whom success is defined by wealth--and former childhood friend Johnny--white trash, ex-National Front--was inspired. Watching their friendship develop into love, and the ensuing bitterness and misunderstanding that they suffer from friends and family is very poignant. All the lead roles are well taken, the contradictory character of Nasser in particular. By turns, funny, touching and anger-inducing, this is a movie that wears its age lightly and its era proudly. On the DVD: the picture is in 4:3 ratio with a Dolby Digital soundtrack. There's an original trailer and filmographies of the four main characters, with an additional biography for Day-Lewis. --Harriet Smith
Burt Lancaster's one and only feature as star and director, The Kentuckian, has a bedrock American folk tale at its core, but scarcely a clue how to tell it. For all his balletic control as an actor-athlete, Lancaster shows no sense of how a film should move and breathe over an hour and a half, or how to make the characters' growth or changes of mind credible. It's the early 18th century--Monroe is president--and buckskin-clad Lancaster and his son (Donald MacDonald) are lighting out for Texas. "It ain't we don't like people--we like room more." They plan briefly to visit Lancaster's tobacco-dealer brother (John McIntire) in the river town of Humility, and then move on. But there are complications from a long-running feud, and some nasty baiting from a whip-cracking storekeeper (Walter Matthau in his film debut); the need to replace their "Texas money" after buying freedom for a bondservant (Dianne Foster); also the matter of deciding who's prettier, her or the local schoolmarm (Diana Lynn). Lancaster aims for some quaint Americana--a sing-along to the tinkling of a pianoforte, a jaw-dropping riverside production number--and there's one nifty bit of action based on how long it took to reload a flintlock rifle. But mostly this film just lies there in overlit CinemaScope. --Richard T Jameson
In protest at the corruption and hypocrisy he sees all around him an unemployed man calling himself ""John Doe"" has written to the New Bulletin newspaper pledging to throw himself from the top of City Hall on Christmas Eve. Written by a discharged journalist as a publicity stunt and as a parting shot at the paper's new editor the premise of the letter unexpectedly fires the imagination of the bulletin's readers and the wider American public. Its real author Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) is rehired and now needs to find someone to play the part of the fictional ""John Doe""... Meet John Doe is often held to be part of a thematic trilogy that includes Mister Deeds Goes To Town and Mister Smith Goes To Washington. It explores a recurring notion in Capra's work that of the universal everyman exploited by a corrupt and powerful establishment. The film's reflections on corporate control of both the media and of ordinary people's lives is still as resonant as ever.
A group of Allied agents prepare to infiltrate German intelligence in Paris to find the whereabouts of a secret rocket site during World War 2. Their task is made even more hazardous by the fact that one of them is a double agent...
Based on an idea by Roberto Saviano, from his international best-selling book, Gomorrah' and the film of the same name, directed by Matteo Garrone, comes an event-series from Italy focused on the fierce Neapolitan crime organization, the Camorra. Set in the suburbs of Naples, focusing on organized crime and the relationships between gangsters, drug dealers, and ordinary people, Gomorrah depicts street-level crime and its hierarchical organization from the pavement, all the way up to regional government offices. The Savastano clan, led by the Godfather, Pietro (Fortunato Cerlino) and his loyal wife, Lady Imma (Maria Pia Calzone) reign over Naples with the assistance of his obedient and self-confident right-hand man, Ciro The Immortal' (Marco D'Amore), who must teach their only son Gennaro - the heir to the Savastano gilded throne, the brutal and bloody ways of their clan. As Gennaro transforms into, and beyond, what Ciro and Pietro could have ever wished for him to become, power struggles ensue, and the balance of power shifts back and forth with devastating consequences for all involved. As the era of the Savastano clan looks to be crumbling, Ciro and Gennaro's fates will intertwine as they spread their criminal links beyond their homeland, encountering new illicit ways to trade in drugs and thrive on the spoils, despite both of them being all but destroyed in the process.
The Big Sleep:One of the most satisfying and sheerly entertaining movies ever to come out of Hollywood this marvellous 1946 classic adaptation of Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled novel is the perfect vehicle for the real-life team of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall whose sultry zingy dialogue adds spice to what has to be the most intricate and most exciting thriller plot ever filmed. In the hands of screen play writers William Faulkner Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman and master director Howard Hawks who slings the lamps low and keeps violence crackling this movie zips along down Chandler's mean Los Angelino streets as Bogie's world-weary cynical private eye Philip Marlowe begins a search for a missing chauffeur that turns into a blackmail hunt with a pretty girl at each turn and a corpse on each corner. The sexual undercurrents are torrid the repartee remarkable the whole just simply terrific. To Have And Have Not:Help the Free French? Not world-weary gunrunner Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart). But he changes his mind when a sultry siren-in-distress named Marie asks ""Anybody got a match?"" That red-hot match is Bogart and 19-year-old first-time film actress Lauren Bacall. Full of intrigue and racy banter (including Bacall's legendary whistling instructions) this thriller excites further interest for what it has and has not. Cannily directed by Howard Hawks and smartly written by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman it doesn't have much similarity to the Ernest Hemingway novel that inspired it. And it strongly resembles Casablanca: French resistance fighters a piano-playing bluesman (Hoagy Carmichael) and a Martinique bar much like Rick's Cafe Americaine. But first and foremost it showcases Bogart and Bacall carrying on with a passion that smolders from the tips of their cigarettes clear through to their souls. Key Largo:A hurricane swells outside but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) holes up and holds at gunpoint hotel owner Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall) and ex-GI Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart). McCloud's the one man capable of standing up against the belligerent Rocco. But the postwar world's realities may have taken all the fight out of him. John Huston co-wrote and compellingly directs this film of Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play with a searing Academy Award winning performance by Claire Trevor as Rocco's gold-hearted boozy moll. In Huston's hands it becomes a powerful sweltering classic. The Dark Passage:Bogey's on the lam and Bacall's at his side in Dark Passage Delmer Daves' stylish film-noir thriller that's the third of four films Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together. Bogart is Vincent Parry a prison escapee framed for murder who emerges from plastic surgery with a new face. Bacall is Irene Jansen Vincent's lone ally. In a supporting role Agnes Moorehead portrays Madge a venomous harpy who finds pleasure in the unhappiness of others. The chemistry of the leads is undeniable and they augment it here with exceptional tenderness. Exceptional too are the atmospheric San Francisco locations and the imaginative camera work that shows Vincent's point of view - but not his face - until the bandages are removed. Lest Irene get ideas the post-surgery Vincent tells her: ""Don't change yours. I like it just as it is.""
Mark Twain's Beloved Story. Live Action.
One of the most controversial films of the 1940s the gangster thriller No Orchids For Miss Blandish caused outrage amongst critics cinema audiences and censors alike on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first released in 1948. Virginal young heiress Miss Blandish (Linda Travers) is kidnapped by a couple of small time hoods only to find herself seized from them by gangster Slim Grissom (Jack LaRue). He isn't just interested in her for the ransom money - and neither are the other members of the Grissom gang. Despite her terrifying ordeal Miss Blandish finds herself perversely attracted to the gang leader. They plan to run off together but amongst gangsters life is cheap -and a double cross is always just around the corner. Based on the best-selling novel by James Hadley Chase No Orchids For Miss Blandish's mixture of sex sadism and gutter morals outraged the world. The book itself was ferociously condemned provoking George Orwell to defend it as 'a brilliant piece of writing'. It was also the most-read book amongst members of Britain's armed forces during the Second World.
Titles Comprise: The Big Sleep: One of the most satisfying and sheerly entertaining movies ever to come out of Hollywood this marvellous 1946 classic adaptation of Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled novel is the perfect vehicle for the real-life team of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall whose sultry zingy dialogue adds spice to what has to be the most intricate and most exciting thriller plot ever filmed. In the hands of screen play writers William Faulkner Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman and master director Howard Hawks who slings the lamps low and keeps violence crackling this movie zips along down Chandler's mean Los Angelino streets as Bogie's world-weary cynical private eye Philip Marlowe begins a search for a missing chauffeur that turns into a blackmail hunt with a pretty girl at each turn and a corpse on each corner. The sexual undercurrents are torrid the repartee remarkable the whole just simply terrific. To Have And Have Not: Help the Free French? Not world-weary gunrunner Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart). But he changes his mind when a sultry siren-in-distress named Marie asks Anybody got a match? That red-hot match is Bogart and 19-year-old first-time film actress Lauren Bacall. Full of intrigue and racy banter (including Bacall's legendary whistling instructions) this thriller excites further interest for what it has and has not. Cannily directed by Howard Hawks and smartly written by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman it doesn't have much similarity to the Ernest Hemingway novel that inspired it. And it strongly resembles Casablanca: French resistance fighters a piano-playing bluesman (Hoagy Carmichael) and a Martinique bar much like Rick's Cafe Americaine. But first and foremost it showcases Bogart and Bacall carrying on with a passion that smolders from the tips of their cigarettes clear through to their souls. Key Largo: A hurricane swells outside but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) holes up and holds at gunpoint hotel owner Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall) and ex-GI Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart). McCloud's the one man capable of standing up against the belligerent Rocco. But the postwar world's realities may have taken all the fight out of him. John Huston co-wrote and compellingly directs this film of Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play with a searing Academy Award winning performance by Claire Trevor as Rocco's gold-hearted boozy moll. In Huston's hands it becomes a powerful sweltering classic. The Dark Passage: Bogey's on the lam and Bacall's at his side in Dark Passage Delmer Daves' stylish film-noir thriller that's the third of four films Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together. Bogart is Vincent Parry a prison escapee framed for murder who emerges from plastic surgery with a new face. Bacall is Irene Jansen Vincent's lone ally. In a supporting role Agnes Moorehead portrays Madge a venomous harpy who finds pleasure in the unhappiness of others. The chemistry of the leads is undeniable and they augment it here with exceptional tenderness. Exceptional too are the atmospheric San Francisco locations and the imaginative camera work that shows Vincent's point of view - but not his face - until the bandages are removed. Lest Irene get ideas the post-surgery Vincent tells her: Don't change yours. I like it just as it is.
Irwin Allen's visually impressive but scientifically silly Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea updates 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as the world's most advanced experimental submarine manoeuvres under the North Pole while the Van Allen radiation belt catches fire, giving the concept "global warming" an entirely new dimension. As the Earth broils in temperatures approaching 170 degrees F, Walter Pidgeon's maniacally driven Admiral Nelson hijacks the Seaview sub and plays tag with the world's combined naval forces on a race to the South Pacific, where he plans to extinguish the interstellar fire with a well-placed nuclear missile. But first he has to fight a mutinous crew, an alarmingly effective saboteur, not one but two giant squid attacks and a host of design flaws that nearly cripple the mission (note to Nelson: think backup generators). Barbara Eden shimmies to Frankie Avalon's trumpet solos in the most form-fitting naval uniform you've ever seen; fish-loving Peter Lorre plays in the shark tank; gloomy religious fanatic Michael Ansara preaches Armageddon; and Joan Fontaine looks very uncomfortable playing an armchair psychoanalyst. It's all pretty absurd, but Allen pumps it up with larger-than-life spectacle and lovely miniature work. Fantastic Voyage is the original psychedelic inner-space adventure. When a brilliant scientist falls into a coma with an inoperable blood clot in the brain, a surgical team embarks on a top-secret journey to the centre of the mind in a high-tech military submarine shrunk to microbial dimensions. Stephen Boyd stars as a colourless commander sent to keep an eye on things (though his eyes stay mostly on shapely medical assistant Raquel Welch), while Donald Pleasence is suitably twitchy as the claustrophobic medical consultant. The science is shaky at best, but the imaginative spectacle is marvellous: scuba-diving surgeons battle white blood cells, tap the lungs to replenish the oxygen supply and shoot the aorta like daredevil surfers. The film took home a well-deserved Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Director Richard Fleischer, who had previously turned Disney's 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea into one of the most riveting submarine adventures of all time, creates a picture so taut with cold-war tensions and cloak-and-dagger secrecy that niggling scientific contradictions (such as, how do miniaturised humans breathe full-sized air molecules?) seem moot. --Sean Axmaker
All About Eve (Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1950): 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 the lives of Margo's director boyfriend (Gary Merrill) her playwright (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife (Celeste Holm). Only
Director Gene Kelly demonstrates wonderful style and sophistication in this adult farce that stars Walter Matthau and Robert Morse as two husbands with one thing on their minds. Matthau is Paul Manning, a happily married 'typical suburban male.' Wanting other women but having no idea how to go about it, he turns to his friend, Ed (Morse), for a few tips on infidelity. An Ed willingly dishes up some of the funniest advice and anecdotes ever seen - brought to life by a top cast that includes Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Joey Bishop, Side Caesar, Art Carney, Phil Silvers and Jayne Mansfield. Despite its delicate subject matter, this wild, wicked comedy is executed with such charm and affection that is won strong critical praise and was one of the top money-makers of its year. Special Features: Walter Matthau - Diamond in the Rough documentary Picture Gallery Original Theatrical Trailer Jayne Mansfield Documentary Trailer
At the turn of the 20th century the film industry sought to elevate its lowbrow status by imitating the theatre. While cinemas decked themselves out like theatres filmmakers signed up stage stars and turned to the classics. Shakespeare provided the greatest challenge especially since many of the films made before the First World War were only one or two reels long.
Having discreetly disbanded at the dawn of the MTV era, the 1970s' most stubbornly faceless pop subversives returned after 19 years with their first new studio album, followed in short order by this stunning long-form video project. Part concert, part documentary, Steely Dan: Two Against Nature offers a savvy cross-section of both old and new material performed by the latest incarnation of the formidable stage bands that founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have assembled for the periodic tours unleashed since their early 90s concert reunion. True to form, they preside over immaculately arranged, flawlessly executed performances that confirm the Dan's state-of-the-art standards, then undercut that achievement with devilish audience sound bites and their own faux cable-access interviews, as if to debunk their artistry with a blast of anti-celebrity. For hardcore Dan fans, Becker and Fagen long ago distanced themselves from rock culture, their music steeped more in 50s jazz and rhythm & blues, and their lyrics pitched to a darker, funnier world-view divorced from youth culture and self-congratulatory rock personae. Fagen, with his close-cropped hair, austere beard, tinted glasses, and prominent incisors resembles a pale, vampiric Ray Charles as he huddles over his keyboards and croons those dangerous lyrics. His partner's longer locks and steel-rimmed glasses reinforce the spectre of a postbop Franz Schubert who has traded clavichords for custom electric guitars--a studious image reinforced by his dry, articulate gibes in the interviews, if undercut by the twisted imagery and shadowy, second-person perspectives pervasive in the band's lyrics (like the music, written by both men, but conspicuously shaped by Becker). The material hews to the group's later albums recorded after they downsized the band into a de facto studio laboratory and dialled up the jazz accents, with understandable showcases for the sneaky new songs on the Two Against Nature album: sleek, seductive songs about incest, midlife crises, pyromania, designer drugs, and other fun stuff. Sonically, the performances are as meticulously recorded and mixed as the duo's albums, with the performance footage beautifully shot and edited. We'd knock director Earle Sebastian for a few too many tilted camera angles, but then we might have to wait another 19 years for the next one. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com
Clint Eastwood (making his very assured directorial debut) is a poetry-spouting stud-muffin DJ stalked by a maniacally amorous fan after a misguided one-night stand in this enjoyably schlocky, undeniably effective film about good intentions gone murderously wacky. Although many of the very 1970s trappings presented here may ultimately be too dated to be taken seriously (including a highly self-indulgent jazz number and a hilariously gooey seduction number between Eastwood and Donna Mills), the core premise of infatuation taken out of bounds remains uncomfortably plausible--and was influential enough to be appropriated by one of the biggest hits of the 1980s. (Here's a hint--it starred Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, and a very unfortunate bunny rabbit.) A well-staged and occasionally very frightening thriller worth watching for Jessica Walter's peerlessly unhinged performance alone. Frequent Eastwood collaborator Don Siegel (director of Dirty Harry, Coogan's Bluff and The Beguiled, to name but a few) has a nice cameo as Murphy, the moustachioed, chess-playing bartender. --Andrew Wright, Amazon.com
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