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Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Big Trouble In Little China [1986]
Actors & Directors
  • John Carpenter|Kurt Russell|Kim Cattrall|Dennis Dun
Run time: 96 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £1.79

Review Big Trouble In Little China [1986] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Once you've realised this 1986 John Carpenter (Halloween) film is not going to be one of the director's more masterful works, Big Trouble in Little China just becomes a full-tilt comic blast. Kurt Russell is hilarious as a drawling, would-be John Wayne hero who steps into the middle of a supernatural war in the heart of Chinatown. While kung-fu warriors and otherworldly spirits battle over the fate of two women (Kim Cattrall and Suzee Pai), Russell's swaggering idiot manages to knock himself out or underestimate the forces he's dealing with. The whole thing is dopey, but it's supposed to be dopey and Russell's game performance brings an ironic edge. Carpenter directs some nifty spook effects (the sudden arrival of three martial-arts demigods from out of nowhere is worth applause), and he also wrote the music. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

Actors & Directors
  • Wayne Rogers
  • Paul Newman
  • Hector Elizondo
  • Lee Marvin
  • Stuart Rosenberg
  • Strother Martin
Run time: 96 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Pocket Money [1972] / Castle Pictures (Defunct Label):


Review Rank VC3162 / King Solomon's Mines
Actors & Directors
  • Anna Lee
  • Cedric Hardwicke
  • John Loder
  • Roland Young
  • Robert Stevenson
  • Paul Robeson
Run time: 77 min.

Review King Solomon's Mines / Rank VC3162:

Video Collection Movie Classics

Review 4 Front Video / Out Of Africa [1986]
Actors & Directors
  • Sydney Pollack
  • Michael Kitchen
  • Malick Bowens
  • Klaus Maria Brandauer
  • Meryl Streep
  • Robert Redford
Release date: 2002-01-14
Run time: 154 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £5.99

Review Out Of Africa [1986] / 4 Front Video:

Winner of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Out of Africa seems to have slipped more readily from public memory than other comparably lauded films. Yet Sidney Pollack's panoramic treatment of Karen Blixen's novel has retained its atmosphere and slow-burning emotion, and deserves reassessment. Meryl Streep is in her possibly most involving starring role as Baroness Karen Blixen, Danish free spirit whose ill-fated venture at the beginning of World War One to run a coffee plantation in Kenya is overlaid by her intimate yet distant relationship with adventurer and idealist Denys Finch Hatton, unselfconsciously portrayed by Robert Redford. Klaus Maria Brandauer puts in a rare and convincing English-language appearance as the amoral but charming womaniser Baron Bror Blixen. The film is tellingly held together by Kurt Luedke's finely honed screenplay, and John Barry's sumptuously expressive score. On the DVD: The anamorphic 1. 85:1 widescreen format reproduces superbly, as does the 4. 1 discrete audio. 18 access points are provided, with printed and aural subtitles in English only. Pollack's feature commentary is amusing enough on a single run-through, but an on-location documentary would have been preferable. [+]
Production notes and biographies are very adequate, though the theatrical trailer reproduction is notably inferior. No matter, this is a major film, well worth the transfer to DVD. -Richard Whitehouse.

Review MGM Entertainment / A Fistful Of Dollars [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Gian Maria Volontè
  • Sieghardt Rupp
  • Wolfgang Lukschy
  • Sergio Leone
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Marianne Koch
  • Monte Hellman
Release date: 2000-02-01
Run time: 97 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £5.94

Review A Fistful Of Dollars [1967] / MGM Entertainment:

This is the movie that launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Before director Sergio Leone picked him out, Clint had played only a few bit parts in features plus his role as Rowdy Yates in the TV Western series Rawhide. Leone cast him for his stillness and physical presence, famously remarking that when Michelangelo was asked what he had seen in a particular block of marble, he said Moses, but that what he, Leone, saw in Eastwood was just that, a block of marble. Leone also claimed that it was he who gave the character his trademark cigar and poncho, though Eastwood has said he brought his own wardrobe to Italy. Whoever takes credit, A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari in Italian) was an extraordinary success when launched in Italy in 1964. Eastwood had to wait longer for it to be a hit in the USA. The film was based on Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, but Leone had forgotten to clear the copyright. Eventually a deal was done, but A Fistful of Dollars was not released in the USA until 1967. It scored an equally resounding success, as did its sequels in the Dollar Trilogy, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character, laconic, amoral, dangerous, as The Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the film's refreshing new take on the Western genre. [+]
Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children (women are virtually absent from the Trilogy). Instead it's every man for himself. Striking too was a new emphasis on violence, with stylised, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armoured breastplate. The popularity of the Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western, for example Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, but its most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himself, still in action at the age of 70. -Edward Buscombe.

Review 4 Front Video / North Sea Hijack [1979]
Actors & Directors
  • David Hedison
  • Anthony Perkins
  • James Mason
  • Michael Parks
  • Roger Moore
  • Andrew V. McLaglen
Release date: 2000-06-05
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.95

Review North Sea Hijack [1979] / 4 Front Video:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Drop Zone [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Wesley Snipes
  • Gary Busey
  • John Badham
  • Michael Jeter
  • Yancy Butler
  • Corin Nemec
Release date: 2000-02-07
Run time: 97 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £1.73

Review Drop Zone [1995] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review Entertainment in Video / Blade II [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Wesley Snipes
  • Guillermo del Toro
  • Kris Kristofferson
  • Leonor Varela
  • Ron Perlman
  • Norman Reedus
Release date: 2002-09-30
Run time: 117 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £0.99

Review Blade II [2002] / Entertainment in Video:

Aptly described by critic Roger Ebert as "a vomitorium of viscera", Blade II takes the express route to sequel success. So if you enjoyed Blade, you'll probably drool over this monster mash, which is anything but boring. Set (and filmed) in Prague, the plot finds a new crop of "Reaper" vampires threatening to implement a viral breeding program, and they're nearly impervious to attacks by Blade (Wesley Snipes), his now-revived mentor Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), and a small army of "normal" vampires who routinely combust in a constant conflagration of spectacular special effects. It's up to Blade to conquer the über-vamps, and both Snipes and director Guillermo del Toro (Mimic) serve up a nonstop smorgasbord of intensely choreographed action, creepy makeup, and graphic ultra-violence, with the ever-imposing Ron Perlman as a vampire villain. It's sadistic, juvenile, numbing, and-for those who dig this kind of thing-undeniably impressive. -Jeff Shannon.

Review Medusa Comms. and Mktg. Ltd. / Deathstalker 2 - Duel Of The Titans [1985]
Actors & Directors
  • John Terlesky
  • Monique Gabrielle
  • Jim Wynorski
  • Toni Naples
  • John Lazar
Run time: 85 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £10.00

Review Deathstalker 2 - Duel Of The Titans [1985] / Medusa Comms. and Mktg. Ltd.:

MAGICAL MYSTICAL COMEDY.

Actors & Directors
  • Cristina Raines
  • David Essex
  • Clarke Peters
  • Harry H. Corbett
  • David Wickes
  • Beau Bridges
Release date: 1990-09-24
Run time: 107 min.
RRP: £6.99
Price: £5.00

Review Silver Dream Racer [1980] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Executive Decision [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • John Leguizamo
  • Oliver Platt
  • Kurt Russell
  • Steven Seagal
  • Halle Berry
  • Stuart Baird
Release date: 1997-07-14
Run time: 127 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £0.99

Review Executive Decision [1996] / Warner Home Video:

Steven Seagal gets killed during the first 20 minutes of this enjoyable thriller, so Executive Decision scores points for ingenuity because it immediately improves when you realise that Seagal's role is just a heroic cameo. That leaves Kurt Russell to star as an American intelligence expert who (due to Seagal's untimely demise) finds himself leading a strike force against Islamic terrorists who have seized in-flight control of a 747 jetliner with 400 passengers. It's not all that different from Air Force One, but the formula story perks right along with considerable suspense as Russell's cohorts (Oliver Platt, Joe Morton) try to defuse a chemical bomb that could wipe out (you guessed it) the entire Eastern seaboard. John Leguizamo plays one of the US commandos attempting to stop the violent hijackers and Halle Berry co-stars as a flight attendant who risks her life to assist Russell's rescue team. As action movies go, Executive Decision marked an impressive directorial debut for veteran film editor Stuart Baird. -Jeff Shannon.

Review Warner Home Video / Desperate Journey [1942]
Actors & Directors
  • Raoul Walsh
  • Nancy Coleman
  • Ronald Reagan
  • Errol Flynn
Release date: 1990-05-21
Run time: 103 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £35.99

Review Desperate Journey [1942] / Warner Home Video:


Review Cinema Club / Silent Trigger [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Dolph Lundgren
  • Emma Stevens
  • Russell Mulcahy
  • Gina Bellman
  • Christopher Heyerdahl
  • Conrad Dunn
Release date: 2002-10-07
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.69

Review Silent Trigger [1996] / Cinema Club:


Review Tartan Video / October - Ten Days That Shook The World [1927]
Actors & Directors
  • Mikholyev
  • Vladimir Popov (II)
  • Sergei M. Eisenstein
  • Grigori Aleksandrov
  • Vasili Nikandrov
  • Smelsky
  • Layaschenko
Release date: 1997-07-28
Run time: 99 min.
Price: £15.99

Review October - Ten Days That Shook The World [1927] / Tartan Video:


Review MGM Entertainment / ThunderBall (1965)
Actors & Directors
  • Claudine Auger
  • Rik Van Nutter
  • Terence Young
  • Luciana Paluzzi
  • Sean Connery
  • Adolfo Celi
Release date: 2003-11-03
Run time: 125 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.75

Review ThunderBall (1965) / MGM Entertainment:

James Bond's fourth adventure takes him to the Bahamas, where a NATO warplane with a nuclear payload has disappeared into the sea. Bond (Sean Connery) travels from a tony health spa (where he tangles with a mechanised masseuse run amuck) to the casinos of Nassau and soon picks up the trail of SPECTRE's number-two man, Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) and his beautiful mistress, Domino (Claudine Auger), whom Bond soon seduces to his side. Equipped with more gadgets than ever, courtesy of the resourceful "Q" (Desmond Llewelyn), agent 007 escapes an ambush with a personal-size jet pack and takes to the water as he searches for the undersea plane, battles Largo's pet sharks, and finally leads the battle against Largo's scuba-equipped henchmen in a spectacular underwater climax. This thrilling Bond entry became Connery's most successful outing in the series and was remade in 1983 as Never Say Never Again, with Connery returning to the role after a 12-year hiatus. Tom Jones belts out the bold theme song to another classic Maurice Binder title sequence. -Sean Axmaker.

Actors & Directors
  • Deborah Raffin
  • Martin Balsam
  • Michael Winner
  • Ed Lauter
  • Charles Bronson
  • Gavan O'Herlihy
Release date: 1991-03-18
Run time: 86 min.
Price: £6.99

Review Death Wish 3 [1985] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Richie Rich [1994]
Actors & Directors
  • John Larroquette
  • Donald Petrie
  • Jonathan Hyde
  • Edward Herrmann
  • Christine Ebersole
  • Macaulay Culkin
Release date: 1996-03-04
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £9.48

Review Richie Rich [1994] / Warner Home Video:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Sandlot Kids
Actors & Directors
  • Thomas Guiry
  • Denis Leary
  • David Mickey Evans
  • Karen Allen
  • Patrick Renna
  • Mike Vitar
Release date: 1995-08-14
Run time: 97 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £4.60

Review The Sandlot Kids / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review MGM Entertainment / Live And Let Die [1973]
Actors & Directors
  • Clifton James
  • Jane Seymour
  • Julius Harris
  • Yaphet Kotto
  • Guy Hamilton
  • Roger Moore
Release date: 1995-11-06
Run time: 116 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.08

Review Live And Let Die [1973] / MGM Entertainment:

Roger Moore was introduced as James Bond in this 1973 action movie featuring secret agent 007. More self-consciously suave and formal than predecessor Sean Connery, he immediately re-established Bond as an uncomplicated and wooden fellow for the feel-good 70s. Live and let Die also marks a deviation from the more character-driven stories of the Connery years, a deliberate shift to plastic action (multiple chases, bravura stunts) that made the franchise more of a comic book or machine. If that's not depressing enough, there's even a good British director on board, Guy Hamilton (Force 10 from Navarone). The story finds Bond taking on an international drug dealer (Yaphet Kotto), and while that may be superficially relevant, it isn't exactly the same as fighting supervillains on the order of Goldfinger. -Tom Keogh.

Review Warner Home Video / The Outlaw Josey Wales [1976]
Actors & Directors
  • Bill McKinney
  • John Vernon
  • Sondra Locke
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Clint Eastwood
Release date: 1998-04-27
Run time: 130 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.49

Review The Outlaw Josey Wales [1976] / Warner Home Video:

During the Civil War, Union "Redlegs" attack Southerner Josey Wales's dirt farm and wipe out his family. Seeking vengeance, Wales throws in with a company of Reb guerrillas. Tagged as a renegade after the surrender, he flees west into the vastness of the Indian Territories, where, quite unintentionally, he finds himself cast as the straight-shooting paterfamilias of an ever-growing, spectacularly motley community of misfits and castaways. Which is to say, Josey's personal quest for survival and something like peace of mind evolves into a funky, multicultural allegory of the healing of America. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Clint Eastwood's 31st film as an actor, 20th as international star, and 5th as director, was the first to win him widespread respect. Critics had grumbled when the producer-star replaced Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) in the director's chair a week into shooting. They ended up cheering when Eastwood delivered both his most sympathetic performance to date and-with the heroic collaboration of cinematographer Bruce Surtees-an impressive Panavision epic that stresses the scruffiness, rather than the scenic splendours, of frontier life. Though it's been honoured with a place in the National Film Registry, Josey Wales is good, not great, Eastwood. The big-gun fetishism can get tiresome, and too many characters exist only to serve as six-gun (and at one point Gatling gun) fodder. But mostly the film is agreeably eccentric, and almost furtively sweet in spirit-a key transitional title in the Eastwood filmography, and one of his most entertaining. [+]
-Richard T Jameson The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Clint Eastwood's 31st film as an actor, 20th as international star and fifth as director, was the first to win him widespread respect. Critics had grumbled when the producer-star replaced Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) in the director's chair a week into shooting. They ended up cheering when Eastwood delivered both his most sympathetic performance to date and-with the heroic collaboration of cinematographer Bruce Surtees-an impressive Panavision epic that stresses the scruffiness, rather than the scenic splendours, of frontier life. During the Civil War, Union "Redlegs" attack Southerner Josey Wales's dirt farm and wipe out his family. Seeking vengeance, Wales throws in with a company of Reb guerrillas. Tagged as a renegade after the surrender, he flees west into the vastness of the Indian Territories, where, quite unintentionally, he finds himself cast as the straight-shooting paterfamilias of an ever-growing, spectacularly motley community of misfits and castaways. This is to say, Josey's personal quest for survival and something like peace of mind evolves into a funky, multicultural allegory of the healing of America. Josey Wales is good, not great, Eastwood. The big-gun fetishism can get tiresome, and too many characters exist only to serve as six-gun (and at one point Gatling gun) fodder. But mostly the film is agreeably eccentric, and almost furtively sweet in spirit-a key transitional title in the Eastwood filmography, and one of his most entertaining. -Richard T Jameson.

Browse Action & Adventure:

Models & Brands:
Big Trouble In Little China [1986], Pocket Money [1972], King Solomon's Mines, Out Of Africa [1986], A Fistful Of Dollars [1967], North Sea Hijack [1979], Drop Zone [1995], Blade II [2002], Deathstalker 2 - Duel Of The Titans [1985], Silver Dream Racer [1980], Executive Decision [1996], Desperate Journey [1942], Silent Trigger [1996], October - Ten Days That Shook The World [1927], ThunderBall (1965), Death Wish 3 [1985], Richie Rich [1994], The Sandlot Kids, Live And Let Die [1973], The Outlaw Josey Wales [1976]

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