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Review MGM Entertainment / Some Like It Hot [1959]
Actors & Directors
  • Pat O'Brien
  • Jack Lemmon
  • George Raft
  • Billy Wilder
  • Marilyn Monroe
  • Tony Curtis
Release date: 2001-11-26
Run time: 117 min.
Creator: Robert Thoeren
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.30

Review Some Like It Hot [1959] / MGM Entertainment:

Maybe "nobody's perfect," as one character in this masterpiece suggests. But some movies are perfect, and Some Like It Hot is one of them. In Chicago, during the Prohibition era, two skirt-chasing musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), inadvertently witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In order to escape the wrath of gangland chief Spats Colombo (George Raft), the boys, in drag, join an all-woman band headed for Florida. They vie for the attention of the lead singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a much-disappointed songbird who warbles "I'm Through with Love" but remains vulnerable to yet another unreliable saxophone player. (When Curtis courts her without his dress, he adopts the voice of Cary Grant-a spot-on impersonation. ) The script by director Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond is beautifully measured; everything works, like a flawless clock. Aspiring screenwriters would be well advised to throw away the how-to books and simply study this film. The bulk of the slapstick is handled by an unhinged Lemmon and the razor-sharp Joe E. [+]
Brown, who plays a horny retiree smitten by Jerry's feminine charms. For all the gags, the film is also wonderfully romantic, as Wilder indulges in just the right amounts of moonlight and the lilting melody of "Park Avenue Fantasy. " Some Like It Hot is so delightfully fizzy, it's hard to believe the shooting of the film was a headache, with an unhappy Monroe on her worst behaviour. The results, however, are sublime. -Robert Horton, Amazon. com.

Review / The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Vera Miles
  • Edmond O'Brien
  • John Ford
  • Lee Marvin
  • John Wayne
  • James Stewart
Run time: 123 min.
Creator: James Warner Bellah
Price: £2.99

Review The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance [1962]:

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. " That's more than the code of a newspaperman in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; it's practically the operating credo of director John Ford, the most honoured of American filmmakers. In this late film from a long career, Ford looks at the civilising of an Old West town, Shinbone, through the sad memories of settlers looking back. In the town's wide-open youth, two-fisted Westerner John Wayne and tenderfoot newcomer James Stewart clash over a woman (Vera Miles) but ultimately unite against the notorious outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Ford's nostalgia for the past is tempered by his stark approach, unusual for the visual poet of Stagecoach and The Searchers. The two heavyweights, Wayne and Stewart, are good together, with Wayne the embodiment of rugged individualism and Stewart the idealistic prophet of the civilisation that will eventually tame the Wild West. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance may be the saddest Western ever made, closer to an elegy than an action movie, and as cleanly beautiful as its central symbol, the cactus rose. -Robert Horton The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a late film from the long career of director John Ford that tells of the civilising of an Old West town, Shinbone, through the sad memories of settlers looking back. Ford's nostalgia for the past is tempered by his stark approach, unusual for the visual poet of Stagecoach and The Searchers. The two heavyweights, John Wayne and James Stewart, are good together, with Wayne the embodiment of rugged individualism and Stewart the idealistic prophet of the civilisation that will eventually tame the Wild West. [+]
This may be the saddest Western ever made, closer to an elegy than an action movie, and as cleanly beautiful as its central symbol, the cactus rose. -Robert Horton.

Review Delta Visual Entertainment / Blood On The Sun [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • John Emery
  • James Cagney
  • Sylvia Sidney
  • Robert Armstrong
  • Porter Hall
  • Frank Lloyd
Release date: 1999-09-13
Run time: 101 min.
Creator: Nathaniel Curtis
RRP: £4.99
Price: £3.99

Review Blood On The Sun [1945] / Delta Visual Entertainment:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Between The Lines - Nothing To Declare [1992]
Actors & Directors
  • Peter Smith
Release date: 1995-08-07
Run time: 195 min.
Creator: Steve Griffiths
Price: £12.99

Review Between The Lines - Nothing To Declare [1992] / 2 Entertain Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Johnny Briggs
  • Benny Hill
  • Lewis Gilbert
  • Ian Carmichael
  • Tommy Steele
  • Dick Emery
Release date: 1997-07-21
Run time: 86 min.
Creator: Vernon Harris
RRP: £5.99
Price: £24.99

Review Light Up The Sky [1960] / 4 Front Video:


Review 4 Front Video / Shampoo [1975]
Actors & Directors
  • Hal Ashby
  • Goldie Hawn
  • Jack Warden
  • Warren Beatty
  • Lee Grant
  • Julie Christie
Release date: 2002-07-01
Run time: 103 min.
Creator: Robert Towne
RRP: £5.99
Price: £11.99

Review Shampoo [1975] / 4 Front Video:

A modish creation teased into life by Warren Beatty, Shampoo was an offbeat Hollywood hit back in 1975. Made after Watergate, it reflects on the hedonism of late-60s Los Angeles with a sad, somewhat cynical eye. Basically a bedroom farce, fuelled by some famously raunchy dialogue, its comedy is nevertheless underlain with melancholy. Screenwriter Robert Towne was inspired by Wycherly's Restoration comedy The Country Wife, wherein a wily fellow convinces friends of his impotence even while he is merrily seducing their wives. Hence, Towne invented handsome Beverly Hills hairdresser George Roundy (Beatty), who ought to be gay, but emphatically isn't. Shampoo begins on US Election Day, 1968, as Nixon is trouncing McGovern at the polls, and George Roundy is trying to sort his life out. An earnest advocate of sensual pleasure, he beds most of his female clients, from the fretful Jill (Goldie Hawn) to the wealthy Felicia (Lee Grant). Yet George is himself unfulfilled, and imagines that owning his own salon will satisfy him. He asks Felicia's husband Lester (Jack Warden) to back him, but first Lester coerces George into squiring his mistress Jackie (Julie Christie) to a Nixon victory party. Inevitably, Jackie is another of George's girls and, having seduced Felicia's vivacious daughter (Carrie Fisher) earlier that day, George has much to conceal from Lester and Felicia as the evening's festivities unravel. [+]
Shampoo shows the 60s turning sour. The characters are rich hippies, superficially liberated but deeply unhappy, and blandly indifferent to the dawning of the Nixon era. The excellent Lee Grant won an Oscar, but Shampoo is Beatty's film. He produced it, had a substantive hand in Towne's script, and deputised the nominal director, Hal Ashby. The film mildly exploits legends of Beatty's real-life sexual prowess, but mainly it embodies his commitment to making thoughtful movies for grown-ups. Richard Kelly.

Review Meridian Entertainment / Cider With Rosie [1971]
Actors & Directors
  • Stephen Grendon
  • Andrew Webber
  • Philip Hawkes
  • Claude Whatham
  • Rosemary Leach
  • Peter Chandler
Release date: 2000-01-24
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: Laurie Lee
RRP: £10.99
Price: £24.50

Review Cider With Rosie [1971] / Meridian Entertainment:

Based on a memoir of English writer Laurie Lee and featuring narration by Lee himself, this made-for-television adaptation begins in wartime 1918 with Lee's family moving to the Gloucestershire countryside. Juliet Stevenson (Truly, Madly, Deeply) shines as the matriarch of this large blended family, a compassionate and distracted woman who pines for the brood's missing father. The movie takes Lee from a young boy sleeping in his mother's bed through his girl-obsessed adolescence, fondly dealing with an assortment of relatives, schoolmates and villagers along the way. Lee doesn't actually have cider with girlfriend Rosie until a few minutes before the 82-minute movie ends, but in the meantime Charles Beeson, directing from an adaptation by John Mortimer, has offered up a gentle homage to long-passed era. -Kimberly Heinrichs, Amazon. com.

Review Europa Films / Night Without Stars
Actors & Directors
  • Anthony Pelissier
  • David Farrar
  • Nadia Gray
Run time: 82 min.
RRP: £2.99
Price: £16.99

Review Night Without Stars / Europa Films:

Romantic drama in which a blind lawyer solves the murder of a traitor. Good screenplay from the novel by Winston Graham.

Actors & Directors
  • Harvey Keitel
  • Leonard L. Thomas
  • Victor Argo
  • Robin Burrows
  • Paul Calderon
  • Abel Ferrara
Release date: 1997-09-08
Run time: 90 min.
Creator: Zoë Lund
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.98

Review Bad Lieutenant [1993] / 4 Front Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Jane Seymour
  • Robert Markowitz
  • Jeremy Kemp
  • Michael York
  • Maximilian Schell
  • Diana Quick
Release date: 1992-04-27
Run time: 92 min.
Creator: Sherman Yellen
Price: £5.99

Review The Phantom Of The Opera [1983] / Braveworld Ltd. (Defunct):


Review Second Sight Films Ltd. / Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence [1983]
Actors & Directors
  • David Bowie
  • Takeshi Kitano
  • Jack Thompson
  • Ryuichi Sakamoto
  • Tom Conti
  • Nagisa Oshima
Release date: 1999-06-21
Run time: 118 min.
Creator: Paul Mayersberg
RRP: £10.99
Price: £2.85

Review Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence [1983] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:

A highly unusual war movie with as many detractors as fans, this English-language feature directed by Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses) stars David Bowie as a silent, ethereal POW in a Japanese camp. Protesting-via his own enigmatic rebellion-the camp's brutal conditions and treatment of prisoners, Bowie's character earns the respect of the camp commandant (Ryuichi Sakamoto). While the two seem locked in an unspoken, spiritual understanding, another prisoner (Tom Conti) engages in a more conventional resistance against a monstrous sergeant (Takeshi). The film has a way of evoking as many questions as certainties and it is not always easy to understand the internal logic of the characters' actions. But that's generally true of Oshima's movies, in which the power of certain relationships is almost hallucinatory in self-referential intensity. The cast is outstanding, and Bowie is particularly fascinating in his alien way. -Tom Keogh.

Review Vipco / Shogun Assassin [1981]
Actors & Directors
  • Shin Kishida
  • Akiji Kobayashi
  • Tomisaburo Wakayama
  • Minoru Ohki
  • Kayo Matsuo
  • Robert Houston
Release date: 2000-02-21
Run time: 81 min.
Creator: Kazuo Koike
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.20

Review Shogun Assassin [1981] / Vipco:


Actors & Directors
  • robert culp
  • arthur alan seidelman
  • linda hamiton
  • bryan cranston
  • angela lansbury
Run time: 139 min.

Review MURDER SHE WROTE (volume 11) 3 episodes / universal:

139 minutes. starring ANGELA LANSBURY. 3 episodes are: 1. MURDER BY APPOINTMENT ONLY 2/CHRIS BUNDY DIED ON SUNDAY 3/MENACE,ANYONE? guest stars:LINDA HAMILTON,ROBERT CULP,BRYAN CRANSTON,ROBERT STACK.

Review Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Calendar Girls [2003]
Actors & Directors
  • John Alderton
  • Linda Bassett
  • Helen Mirren
  • Julie Walters
  • Penelope Wilton
  • Nigel Cole
Release date: 2004-02-09
Run time: 105 min.
Creator: Tim Firth
RRP: £14.99
Price: £3.50

Review Calendar Girls [2003] / Buena Vista Home Entertainment:

In the sensible yet elegant hands of actresses Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, Calendar Girls walks a fine line between sappiness and snickering and ends up both wonderfully funny and gently touching. When her best friend Annie (Walters) loses her husband, Chris (Mirren) cooks up a scheme to commemorate him: they and their friends-all fiftysomething women-will make a nude calendar to raise money for the hospital where he died. The calendar becomes hugely popular, but the success may drive a wedge between the two women's friendship. Based on a true story, Calendar Girls carefully balances the stories of several women as it follows the calendar's media explosion, becoming a surprisingly moving fable of loss, determination and the perils of fame. And let's face it-Helen Mirren is one of the wittiest and sexiest women alive, clothes on or not. -Bret Fetzer.

Review Warner Home Video / Blood Work [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Wanda De Jesus
  • Anjelica Huston
  • Tina Lifford
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Jeff Daniels
  • Clint Eastwood
Release date: 2003-06-30
Run time: 106 min.
Creator: Michael Connelly
RRP: £12.99
Price: £1.95

Review Blood Work [2002] / Warner Home Video:


Review Warner Vision International / Sopranos, The - Vol. 1 : Episodes 1-3 - The Sopranos / 46 Long / Denial, Anger, Acceptance
Actors & Directors
  • Lorraine Bracco
  • Michael Imperioli
  • James Gandolfini
  • Nick Gomez
  • David Chase
  • Steve Van Zandt
  • Daniel Attias
  • Edie Falco
Release date: 1999-08-16
Run time: 155 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.85

Review Sopranos, The - Vol. 1 : Episodes 1-3 - The Sopranos / 46 Long / Denial, Anger, Acceptance / Warner Vision International:


Review 4 Front Video / Dance With A Stranger [1985]
Actors & Directors
  • Joanne Whalley
  • Ian Holm
  • Rupert Everett
  • Mike Newell
  • Miranda Richardson
  • Stratford Johns
Release date: 1997-05-12
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £4.99

Review Dance With A Stranger [1985] / 4 Front Video:


Review Warner Home Video / The Yakuza [1975]
Actors & Directors
  • Brian Keith
  • Herb Edelman
  • Takakura Ken
  • Sydney Pollack
  • Robert Mitchum
  • Richard Jordan
Release date: 1994-07-04
Run time: 107 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £19.95

Review The Yakuza [1975] / Warner Home Video:


Review 4 Front Video / The War [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Jon Avnet
  • Lexi Randall
  • Kevin Costner
  • Mare Winningham
  • Elijah Wood
  • LaToya Chisholm
Release date: 2001-02-05
Run time: 120 min.
Creator: Lisa Lindstrom
RRP: £5.99
Price: £12.98

Review The War [1996] / 4 Front Video:

Kevin Costner is the big name in The War, but the film belongs squarely to Elijah Wood, who plays his son. The film deals with the children of a Vietnam veteran in 1970 Mississippi; as their dad (Costner) tries to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in the war, the kids build a mammoth tree house in the woods-then must defend it against the local white-trash bullies. The film includes a particularly harrowing contest involving a swim across the reservoir of a decrepit water tower; still, director Jon Avnet can't avoid a certain "can't we all just get along" didactic message. That doesn't put a damper on the youthfully natural quality of the child actors, and Costner is actually quite winning as a sensitive, troubled soul. -Marshall Fine, Amazon. com.

Review MGM Entertainment / Night of the Iguana [1964]
Actors & Directors
  • Ava Gardner
  • Sue Lyon
  • John Huston
  • Grayson Hall
  • Deborah Kerr
  • Richard Burton
Release date: 1996-07-22
Run time: 113 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £24.95

Review Night of the Iguana [1964] / MGM Entertainment:


Models & Brands:
Some Like It Hot [1959], The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance [1962], Blood On The Sun [1945], Between The Lines - Nothing To Declare [1992], Light Up The Sky [1960], Shampoo [1975], Cider With Rosie [1971], Night Without Stars, Bad Lieutenant [1993], The Phantom Of The Opera [1983], Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence [1983], Shogun Assassin [1981], MURDER SHE WROTE (volume 11) 3 episodes, Calendar Girls [2003], Blood Work [2002], Sopranos, The - Vol. 1 : Episodes 1-3 - The Sopranos / 46 Long / Denial, Anger, Acceptance, Dance With A Stranger [1985], The Yakuza [1975], The War [1996], Night of the Iguana [1964]

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