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Review Warner Home Video / Cat And Mouse [1974]
Actors & Directors
  • John Vernon
  • Kirk Douglas
  • Jean Seberg
  • Daniel Petrie
Release date: 1994-02-07
Run time: 85 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.99

Review Cat And Mouse [1974] / Warner Home Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Agatha Christie's Murder Most Foul [1964]
Actors & Directors
  • Megs Jenkins
  • Margaret Rutherford
  • George Pollock
  • Andrew Cruickshank
  • Charles 'Bud' Tingwell
  • Ron Moody
Release date: 2000-08-21
Run time: 87 min.
RRP: £6.99
Price: £4.90

Review Agatha Christie's Murder Most Foul [1964] / Warner Home Video:


Price: £10.99

Review Assignment / DRAGON:

THE ASSIGNMENT DRAMATIC WAR EPIC

Review Universal Pictures UK / Enigma [1983]
Actors & Directors
  • Jeannot Szwarc
  • Derek Jacobi
  • Martin Sheen
  • Sam Neill
  • Michael Lonsdale
  • Brigitte Fossey
Release date: 1995-01-16
Run time: 97 min.
Price: £10.99

Review Enigma [1983] / Universal Pictures UK:


Review Fremantle Home Entertainment / Spellbound [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • Leo G. Carroll
  • Alfred Hitchcock
  • Ingrid Bergman
  • Gregory Peck
  • Wallace Ford
  • Rhonda Fleming
Release date: 2000-10-30
Run time: 111 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.79

Review Spellbound [1945] / Fremantle Home Entertainment:

Alfred Hitchcock takes on Sigmund Freud in this thriller in which psychologist Ingrid Bergman tries to solve a murder by unlocking the clues hidden in the mind of amnesiac suspect Gregory Peck. Among the highlights is a bizarre dream sequence seemingly designed by Salvador Dali-complete with huge eyeballs and pointy scissors. Although the film is in black and white, the original release contained one subliminal blood-red frame, appearing when a gun pointed directly at the camera goes off. Spellbound is one of Hitchcock's strangest and most atmospheric films, providing the director with plenty of opportunities to explore what he called "pure cinema"-i. e. , the power of pure visual associations. Miklós Rózsa's haunting score (which features the creepy electronic instrument, the theremin) won an Oscar, and the movie was nominated for best picture, director, supporting actor (Michael Chekhov), cinematography and special visual effects. -Jim Emerson.

Review Warner Home Video / New Jack City [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • Judd Nelson
  • Chris Rock
  • Mario Van Peebles
  • Ice-T
  • Mario Van Peebles
  • Wesley Snipes
Release date: 1996-02-19
Run time: 96 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £0.98

Review New Jack City [1991] / Warner Home Video:

Some pundits called it a flawed, exploitative action film that glamorised drug dealing and the luxury of a lucrative criminal lifestyle, spawning a trend of films that attracted youth gangs and provoked violence in cinemas. Others hailed it as a breakthrough movie that depicted drug dealers as ruthless, corrupt, and evil, leading dead-end lives that no rational youth would want to emulate. However you interpret it, New Jack City is still one of the first and best films of the 1990s to crack open the underworld of cocaine and peer inside with its eyes wide open. It's also the film that established Wesley Snipes as an actor to watch, with enough charisma to bring an insidious quality of seduction to his role as coke-lord Nino Brown, and enough intelligence to portray a character deluded by his own sense of indestructible power. Director Mario Van Peebles stretched his otherwise-limited talent to bring vivid authenticity and urgency to this crime story, and subplots involving a pair of tenacious cops (Ice-T, Judd Nelson) and a recovering coke addict (Chris Rock) provide additional dramatic tension. Although some critics may hesitate to admit it, New Jack City deserves mention in any serious discussion about African American filmmakers and influential films. -Jeff Shannon.

Actors & Directors
  • Brian Donlevy
  • Margaret Lee
  • Christopher Lee
  • Klaus Kinski
  • Jeremy Summers
  • George Raft
Release date: 1991-02-25
Run time: 100 min.
Price: £8.99

Review Five Golden Dragons [1967] / Castle Pictures (Defunct Label):


Review Warner Home Video / Fair Game [1995] [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Andrew Sipes|William Baldwin|Cindy Crawford|Steven Berkoff
Release date: 1997-03-17
Run time: 86 min.
RRP: £10.99
Price: £0.90

Review Fair Game [1995] [1996] / Warner Home Video:

She's a lawyer. He's a cop. Some former KGB-types with a wide variety of slippery accents and enough sophisticated technological surveillance gadgets to make one wonder how the Soviet Union could have possibly failed, want her dead. The cop (William Baldwin) is the only man who can save her. It helps that the high-powered attorney is played by Cindy Crawford, who gives new meaning to the phrase "habeas corpus. " So the plot doesn't make any sense: first, they try to kill her, no questions asked. Then they capture her and spill their guts about all the details of their nefarious plan. Logic is not what Fair Game is about. It's about explosions, car crashes and more explosions. The only pauses in the action are for showers (one for Baldwin, two for Crawford) and a change of clothing (Crawford slips out of a tight T-shirt into an even tighter tank top). [+]
The best feature of the DVD is the addition of a Gallic track. With very little actual sex in the movie, having the main characters conversing in French definitely adds some sauciness to the dialogue scenes. -Richard Natale, Amazon. com.

Review Entertainment in Video / The Crow [1993]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Wincott
  • Alex Proyas
  • Ernie Hudson
  • Ling Bai
  • Brandon Lee
  • Rochelle Davis
Release date: 1999-10-01
Run time: 101 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £1.49

Review The Crow [1993] / Entertainment in Video:

The Crow set the standard for dark and violent comic-book movies (like Spawn or director Alex Proyas's superior follow-up, Dark City), but it will forever be remembered as the film during which star Brandon Lee (son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee) was accidentally killed on the set by a loaded gun. The filmmakers were able to digitally sample what they'd captured of Lee's performance and piece together enough footage to make the film releasable. Indeed, it is probably more fascinating for that post-production story than for the tale on the screen. The Crow is appropriately cloaked in ominous expressionistic shadows, oozing urban dread and occult menace from every dank, concrete crack, but it really adds up to a simple and perfunctory tale of ritual revenge. Guided by a portentous crow (standing in for Poe's raven), Lee plays a deceased rock musician who returns from the grave to systematically torture and kill the outlandishly violent gang of hoodlums who murdered him and his fiancée the year before. The film is worth watching for its compelling visuals and genuinely nightmarish, otherworldly ambience. -Jim Emerson.

Review 4 Front Video / The Grifters [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • Stephen Frears
  • Annette Bening
  • Jan Munroe
  • John Cusack
  • Robert Weems
  • Anjelica Huston
Release date: 2001-07-02
Run time: 105 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £17.44

Review The Grifters [1991] / 4 Front Video:

Annette Bening twists like a mink on a leash through Stephen Frears' The Grifters, an adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel. This may be the perfect trope for the moral hysteria that coils around a mother, her son and his girlfriend in this slender but highly pleasurable neo-noir. Small in effect and local in scope, the film is about small-fry, attractive, bloodless con-artists who view the world as neatly split between ropers and suckers, grifters and squares. "Grifter's got an irresistible urge to beat a guy that's wise", an old-timer tells Roy (John Cusack). And yet the three characters here-played by Angelica Huston, John Cusack and Bening-only beat the innocent: Lilly (Huston) gigs at the track for a mobster named Bobo, putting wads of cash on long-shot horses to even out the odds. Roy, her son, swindles citizens by dimes and degrees, flashing twenties at bars then paying for his beer with tens. His girlfriend, Myra (Bening), is hustling herself, her salad days as a long-con roper behind her. Theirs is a world of gut punches and smart lines, and the adrenaline these cheats and chisellers live by is palpable onscreen. But a larger canvas? Maybe it's there as a parallel universe. "What do you sell again?" Myra asks Roy, the matchbook salesman. [+]
"Self-confidence", he says, a wry allusion to the confidence game all three of them are playing. The movie boasts dazzling turns by Bening, Cusack and, especially, Huston, whose m&eagrave;re-fatale breaks new ground for noir. -Lyall Bush, Amazon. com.

Review Death Vengeance:

It's a hard crime story about a Philadelphia shop owner who has enough of the criminals' violences and ravages. He organizes a patrol of civil people. It all starts to go wrong because his team's actions are taken as racial discrimination. Starring Tom Skerritt, Patti LuPone, Michael Sarrazin and Yaphet Kotto. 92 minutes long - also known as 'Fighting Back'.

Review Moonstone Pictures / Survival Zone [1984]
Actors & Directors
  • Joanie Combrink
  • Gary Lockwood
  • Morgan Stevens
  • Zoli Marki
  • Percival Rubens
  • Camilla Sparv
Release date: 1994-08-22
Run time: 90 min.
Price: £12.99

Review Survival Zone [1984] / Moonstone Pictures:


Review Cinema Club / Silkwood [1984]
Actors & Directors
  • Cher
  • Mike Nichols
  • Craig T. Nelson
  • Fred Ward
  • Kurt Russell
  • Meryl Streep
Price: £5.99

Review Silkwood [1984] / Cinema Club:

As a tale of self-discovery, Silkwood, Mike Nichols' 1982 biopic of the plutonium factory worker who uncovered negligence and dangerous practices at the heart of her employer's company, works well enough. Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep) is no saint. She drinks, cheerfully gets 'em out for the boys, has left her husband and kids and lives in a curious ménage à trois with her lover, (Kurt Russell) and their lesbian friend (Cher). But, through her own dawning suspicions, she is drawn into union activism and embarks on a crusade to expose the rottenness of her paymasters, only to die in a mysterious car crash. And here is the flaw. The film can't decide whether it's quirky soap opera, a campaigning blow for the anti-nuclear lobby or an allegory for the conflict between the rights of the individual and the demands of the corporate giant. It stops short of providing some important conclusions about what really happened to its central character, and why. Streep is fine though, injecting her character with a studied mixture of innate intelligence and trailer park trash. Russell offers solid support and Cher is outstanding as housemate Dolly Pelliker. Their performances give Silkwood its heart as a powerful human drama. [+]
On the DVD: Silkwood is well-served on this DVD release by sharp picture and sound quality (Georges Delerue's poignantly jaunty country and western soundtrack benefits in particular), but the extras are static and add little to the package apart from a strictly "budget" feel: standard biographies of the stars and director with some pretty pointless trivia facts, and a brief history of the production. There's nothing here that even the most generalist of film fans won't already know. A director's commentary explaining why the film loses its bottle in the final reel would be more interesting. -Piers Ford.

Actors & Directors
  • Strother Martin
  • Stuart Rosenberg
  • Henry Silva
  • Charles Bronson
  • Rod Steiger
  • Jill Ireland
  • John Huston
Release date: 2000-02-28
Run time: 97 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £12.99

Review Love And Bullets [1979] / ITV DVD:


Review Warner Home Video / The Negotiator [1998]
Actors & Directors
  • John Spencer
  • Samuel L. Jackson
  • David Morse
  • Ron Rifkin
  • F. Gary Gray
  • Kevin Spacey
Release date: 1999-11-22
Run time: 134 min.
RRP: £6.99
Price: £0.01

Review The Negotiator [1998] / Warner Home Video:

Although it eventually runs out of smart ideas and resorts to a typically explosive finale, this above-average thriller rises above its formulaic limitations on the strength of powerful performances by Samuel L Jackson and Kevin Spacey. Both play Chicago police negotiators with hotshot reputations, but when Jackson's character finds himself falsely accused of embezzling funds from a police pension fund, he's so thoroughly framed that he must take extreme measures to prove his innocence. He takes hostages in police headquarters to buy time and plan his strategy, demanding that Spacey be brought in to mediate with him as an army of cops threatens to attack, and a media circus ensues. Both negotiators know how to get into the other man's thoughts, and this intellectual showdown allows both Spacey and Jackson to ignite the screen with a burst of volatile intensity. Director F Gary Gray is disadvantaged by an otherwise predictable screenplay, but he has a knack for building suspense and is generous to a fine supporting cast, including Paul Giamatti as one of Jackson's high-strung hostages, and the late JT Walsh in what would sadly be his final big-screen role. The Negotiator should have trusted its compelling characters a little more, probing their psyches more intensely to give the suspense a deeper dramatic foundation, but it's good enough to give two great actors a chance to strut their stuff. -Jeff Shannon.

Review MGM Entertainment / Fatal Beauty [1989]
Actors & Directors
  • Sam Elliott
  • John P. Ryan
  • Harris Yulin
  • Tom Holland
  • Whoopi Goldberg
  • Rubén Blades
Release date: 2000-04-10
Run time: 100 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.45

Review Fatal Beauty [1989] / MGM Entertainment:


Actors & Directors
  • Patricia Medina
  • Ronald Fraser
  • Beryl Reid
  • Susannah York
  • Coral Browne
  • Robert Aldrich
Release date: 2001-04-02
Run time: 138 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £9.99

Review The Killing of Sister George (1968) / CINEMA CLUB:


Review 4 Front Video / Twelve Monkeys [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Terry Gilliam
  • Joseph Melito
  • Vernon Campbell
  • Michael Chance
  • Jon Seda
  • Bruce Willis
Release date: 1999-05-10
Run time: 124 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £0.50

Review Twelve Monkeys [1996] / 4 Front Video:

Inspired by Chris Marker's acclaimed short film La Jetée, 12 Monkeys combines intricate, intelligent storytelling with the uniquely imaginative vision of director Terry Gilliam. The story opens in the wintry wasteland of the year 2035, where a virulent plague has forced humans to live in a squalid, oppressively regimented underground. Bruce Willis plays a societal outcast who is given the opportunity to erase his criminal record by "volunteering" to time-travel into the past to obtain a pure sample of the deadly virus that will help future scientists to develop a cure. But in bouncing from 1918 to the early and mid-1990s, he undergoes an ordeal that forces him to question his own perceptions of reality. Caught between the dangers of the past and the devastation of the future, he encounters a psychiatrist (Madeleine Stowe) who is initially convinced he's insane, and a wacky mental patient (Brad Pitt in a twitchy Oscar-nominated role) with links to a radical group that may have unleashed the deadly virus. Equal parts mystery, tragedy, psychological thriller, and apocalyptic drama, 12 Monkeys ranks as one of the best science fiction films of the 1990s, boosted by Gilliam's visual ingenuity and one of the finest performances of Willis's career. -Jeff Shannon.

Review 4 Front Video / Victimised [1985]
Actors & Directors
  • Barbara Bosson
  • William A. Graham
  • Tom Skerritt
  • Pat Corley
  • Robert Beltran
  • Sharon Stone
Release date: 1995-09-11
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.74

Review Victimised [1985] / 4 Front Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Robert Siodmak
  • Geraldine Fitzgerald
  • George Sanders
  • Ella Raines
Run time: 78 min.

Review The Strange Affair Of Uncle Harry [1945] / Stablecane:

Video Masterpiece

Models & Brands:
Cat And Mouse [1974], Agatha Christie's Murder Most Foul [1964], Assignment, Enigma [1983], Spellbound [1945], New Jack City [1991], Five Golden Dragons [1967], Fair Game [1995] [1996], The Crow [1993], The Grifters [1991], Death Vengeance, Survival Zone [1984], Silkwood [1984], Love And Bullets [1979], The Negotiator [1998], Fatal Beauty [1989], The Killing of Sister George (1968), Twelve Monkeys [1996], Victimised [1985], The Strange Affair Of Uncle Harry [1945]

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