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Review Warner Home Video / Conspiracy [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • David Glover
  • Frank Pierson
  • Stanley Tucci
  • Clare Bullus
  • Simon Markey
  • Kenneth Branagh
Release date: 2003-09-15
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Loring Mandel
RRP: £13.99
Price: £19.99

Review Conspiracy [2001] / Warner Home Video:

Based on the only surviving record of the infamous 1942 Wannsee Conference, the BBC/HBO produced Conspiracy reconstructs the two-hour meeting during which leading members of the SS and the Nazi government made definitive plans for the genocide of Europe's Jews. Sixteen men sit around a table and politely discuss the mechanics and ramifications of murdering millions. As SS General Reinhard Heydrich, overall architect of the Final Solution, Kenneth Branagh is brilliant, charming, manipulative and threatening, a cultured man seemingly without a soul. As his aid, SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann, Stanley Tucci is the incarnation of the banality of evil, an efficient and self-effacing bureaucrat in a fine performance marred only by a hint of the actor's American accent. Colin Firth is a powerful foil for Branagh as Dr Wilhelm Stuckart, author of Nazi Germany's race laws and a stickler for the rule of law, no matter how insane the law may have become; while David Threlfall makes a striking impression as the one man who comes closest to taking a moral stand, Dr Wilhelm Kritzinger. Directed in an elegantly controlled style by Frank Pierson, Conspiracy is the Janus face of the 1957 classic 12 Angry Men and a chilling companion to the BBC/HBO Churchill drama The Gathering Storm (2002). On the DVD: Conspiracy comes to DVD with text profiles of the four leading actors and the director and two featurettes, one running two minutes, the other four, neither of which is any more than an electronic press-kit. Sound is clear, perfectly good Dolby Surround, while the picture, though anamorphically enhanced at 16:9, is no more than adequate. -Gary S Dalkin.

Review Universal Pictures Video / The Jackal [1998]
Actors & Directors
  • Richard Gere
  • Mathilda May
  • Michael Caton-Jones
  • Bruce Willis
  • Sidney Poitier
  • Diane Venora
Release date: 2007-11-09
Run time: 124 min.
Creator: Kenneth Ross
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.57

Review The Jackal [1998] / Universal Pictures Video:

The Jackal is filmmaking by numbers: take two huge stars, Richard Gere and Bruce Willis, and pit them opposite each other in a plot that's already been audience tested. That director Michael Caton Jones' film is based not on Frederick Forsyth's novel but on the script for the 1973 original starring James Fox is the first clue that something here is amiss. Fred Zinneman's The Day of the Jackal was a genuinely taut and claustrophobic thriller; the remake is like a Rocky & Bullwinkle take on international terrorism disguised as an action movie. Dashing IRA terrorist, Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere), is sprung from jail to help the FBI Deputy Director Carton Preston (Sidney Poitier) track down The Jackal, an amoral international terrorist who is a master of disguise. The FBI believes he is about to assassinate a US political bigwig and is engaged in a race against time to discover exactly who the target is and where they will be felled. Throughout the film Gere sports an Irish accent as ill-fitting and phoney as the bushy lip-wig that Willis adopts at one point as a disguise. The usually warm-hearted Willis plays the steel-jawed terrorist with a cool reserve, but he doesn't have much character development to work with (apart from a misguided attempt to introduce a gay subtext). At over two hours of running time with plenty of exposition and precious few action sequences, this film is a test of will for the audience as well as the protagonists. On the DVD: The DVD includes a lengthy "making of" featurette, several deleted scenes and an alternate ending with some small dialogue changes. There is also an exceedingly dry director's commentary by Michael Caton Jones which muses on such mind-numbingly dull details as the colour of the subway platform in the film's climactic sequence. [+]
The film is presented in a clear print in 2. 35:1 anamorphic format with 5. 1 Dolby Digital sound. -Chris Campion.

Review Warner Home Video / The Martin Scorsese Collection : Goodfellas Special Edition / After Hours / Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore / Who's That Knocking At My Door (5 Disc Box Set)
Actors & Directors
  • Ellen Burstyn
  • Robert De Niro
  • Rosanna Arquette
  • Ray Liotta
  • Martin Scorsese
  • Griffin Dunne
Release date: 2004-10-25
RRP: £45.99
Price: £16.95

Review The Martin Scorsese Collection : Goodfellas Special Edition / After Hours / Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore / Who's That Knocking At My Door (5 Disc Box Set) / Warner Home Video:


Review Lions Gate Home Ent. UK Ltd / The Contract [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Morgan Freeman
  • Jamie Anderson
  • John Cusack
  • Megan Dodds
  • Bruce Beresford
  • Ned Bellamy
Release date: 2007-09-10
Run time: 92 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.72

Review The Contract [2006] / Lions Gate Home Ent. UK Ltd:


Review MGM Entertainment / Bond Remastered - Goldfinger (1-disc) [1964]
Actors & Directors
  • Sean Connery
  • Shirley Eaton
  • Honor Blackman
  • Guy Hamilton
  • Gert Frobe
  • Harold Sakata
Release date: 2007-03-12
Run time: 105 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.60

Review Bond Remastered - Goldfinger (1-disc) [1964] / MGM Entertainment:


Review BCI, a Navarre Corporation Company / Savage Streets: Special Edition [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Danny Steinmann
  • Linda Blair
  • Robert Dryer
  • John Vernon
  • Johnny Venocur
  • Sal Landi
Release date: 2008-09-23
Run time: 93 min.
Creator: Norman Yonemoto
Price: £8.18

Review Savage Streets: Special Edition [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / BCI, a Navarre Corporation Company:


Review Goldhil / Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Season 7 (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • William F. Claxton
  • Melissa Gilbert
  • Michael Landon
  • Maury Dexter
  • Karen Grassle
  • Melissa Sue Anderson
  • Michael Landon
  • Lindsay Greenbush
Release date: 2005-02-15
Run time: 1020 min.
Creator: Chris Abbott
Price: £21.25

Review Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Season 7 (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Goldhil:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Sullivan's Travels [1941]
Actors & Directors
  • Joel McCrea
  • Preston Sturges
  • Veronica Lake
  • Franklin Pangborn
  • William Demarest
  • Robert Warwick
Release date: 2006-10-02
Run time: 87 min.
Creator: Paul Jones
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.10

Review Sullivan's Travels [1941] / Universal Pictures UK:

Writer-director Preston Sturges's third feature, 1941's Sullivan's Travels, remains the antic auteur's most ambitious screen effort. Having added the producer's stripe to his duties, Sturges combines breezy romantic comedy, arch Hollywood satire, and social essay into a single, screwball story line. The titular pilgrim is John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea), an Ivy League grad who's enjoyed a meteoric rise as the director behind escapist movies like Ants in Your Pants of 1938, but is now determined to raise his sights toward more exalted, serious-minded cinematic art. His proposed breakthrough, portentously titled O Brother, Where Art Thou?, elicits a studio response closer to "Oh, brother," given the director's utter lack of first-hand experience on the wrong side of the tracks. Instead of capitulating, Sullivan sets off disguised as a tramp, ready to meet life's crueler lessons face-to-face-albeit followed at a discreet distance by a motor home filled with studio handlers and reporters. His ludicrous odyssey may give the boy director no real insight, but it gives Sturges the chance to inject some reliably fine gags and a romantic subplot featuring the luminous Veronica Lake. It's at this juncture that Sturges the writer's darker objective throws a jolting shift in tone. Suffice it to say that just when a comic, upbeat denouement seems imminent, Sullivan travels instead from the sunlit California of the comedy's early reels toward a darker, relentlessly downbeat world influenced more by the social realism of the movies the hero desperately wants to make. By the final reel, Sturges has flirted with real tragedy, turning his conclusion into a meditation on his own seemingly carefree, dizzily comic art. [+]
-Sam Sutherland.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Flight Of The Phoenix [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Aldrich
  • James Stewart
  • Ernest Borgnine
  • Richard Attenborough
  • Peter Finch
  • Hardy Krüger
Release date: 2004-05-03
Run time: 136 min.
Creator: Trevor Dudley Smith
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.70

Review The Flight Of The Phoenix [1965] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Optimum / Howl's Moving Castle [2005]
Actors & Directors
  • Tatsuya Gashuin
  • Hayao Miyazaki
  • Takuya Kimura
  • Ryunosuke Kamiki
  • Chieko Baisho
  • Akihiro Miwa
Release date: 2006-03-13
Run time: 120 min.
Creator: Donald H. Hewitt
RRP: £19.99
Price: £9.53

Review Howl's Moving Castle [2005] / Optimum:

Like a dream, Howl's Moving Castle carries audiences to vistas beyond their imaginations where they experience excitement, adventure, terror, humor, and romance. With domestic box office receipts of over $210 million, Howl passed Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke to become the #3 film in Japanese history, behind his Spirited Away and James Cameron's Titanic. Based on a juvenile novel by Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle marks the first time Miyazaki has adapted another writer's work since Kiki's Delivery Service (1989). Sophie, a 19-year-old girl who believes she is plain, has resigned herself to a drab life in her family's hat shop-until the Witch of the Waste transforms her into a 90-year-old woman. In her aged guise, Sophie searches for a way to break the Witch's spell and finds unexpected adventures. Like Chihiro, the heroine of Spirited Away, Sophie discovers her hidden potential in a magical environment-the castle of the title. Using CG, Miyazaki creates a ramshackle structure that looks like it might disintegrate at any moment. Sophie's honesty and determination win her some valuable new friends: Markl, Howl's young apprentice; a jaunty scarecrow; Calcifer, a temperamental fire demon; and Heen, a hilarious, wheezing dog. She wins the heart of the dashing, irresponsible wizard Howl, and brings an end an unnecessary and destructive war. The film overflows with eclipsing visuals that range from frightening aerial battles to serene landscapes, and few recent features-animated or live action-offer as much magic as Howl's Moving Castle. [+]
-Charles Solomon.

Review Columbia Tri-Star Home Video / The Princess Bride [1987]
Actors & Directors
  • Christopher Guest
  • Rob Reiner
  • Chris Sarandon
  • Cary Elwes
  • Mandy Patinkin
  • Robin Wright Penn
Release date: 2001-07-23
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: William Goldman
RRP: £19.99
Price: £11.00

Review The Princess Bride [1987] / Columbia Tri-Star Home Video:

Director Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride is a gently amusing, affectionate pastiche of a medieval fairytale adventure, offering a similar blend of warm, literate humour as his Stand By Me (1985) and When Harry Met Sally (1989). Adapted from his own novel, William Goldman's script plays with the conventions of such 1980s fantasies as Ladyhawke and Legend (both 1985), and with the budget never allowing for spectacle, sensibly concentrates on creating a gallery of memorable characters. Robin Wright makes a delightful Princess Buttercup, Cary Elwes is splendid as Westley and "Dread Pirate Roberts", while Mandy Patinkin makes fine Spanish avenger. With winning support from Mel Smith, Peter Cook, Billy Crystal and Carol Kane there is sometimes a Terry Gilliam/Monty Python feel to the proceedings, and the whole film is beautifully shot, with a memorably romantic main theme by Mark Knopfler. Occasionally interrupted by Peter Falk as a grandfather reading the story to his grandson, The Princess Bride is an elegant post-modern family fable about storytelling itself; a theme found in other 1980s films The Neverending Story (1984) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). A modest, small-scale work that manages to be both cynically modern and genuinely romantic all at once. As charming as you wish. On the DVD: The 1. 77:1 anamorphic transfer is strong, if not quite as detailed as it might be. Colours lack just a little solidity and some scenes evidence a fair amount of grain. [+]
Released theatrically in Dolby stereo, the Dolby Digital 5. 1 remix spreads the sound effectively across the front speakers but makes very little use of the rear channels indeed. Extras are limited to filmographies of five of the leading actors, and a 4:3 presentation of the theatrical trailer, which gives far too many of the film's surprises away. -Gary S Dalkin.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Fighter In The Wind
Actors & Directors
  • Dong-Kun Yang
  • Yang Yun-Ho
  • Aya Hirayama
  • Masaya Kato
Release date: 2005-05-30
Run time: 120 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.43

Review Fighter In The Wind / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / The High And The Mighty [1954]
Actors & Directors
  • John Wayne
  • William A. Wellman
Release date: 2007-05-14
Run time: 141 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.98

Review The High And The Mighty [1954] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd. / Agent Cody Banks 2 - Destination London [2004]
Actors & Directors
  • Cynthia Stevenson
  • Hannah Spearritt
  • Anthony Anderson
  • Kevin Allen
  • Frankie Muniz
  • Daniel Roebuck
Release date: 2004-09-06
Run time: 96 min.
Creator: Jeffrey Jurgensen
RRP: £15.99
Price: £1.00

Review Agent Cody Banks 2 - Destination London [2004] / Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd.:


Review Yume Pictures / Tokyo Drifter [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Chieko Matsubara
  • Nitani Hideaki
  • Tetsuya Watari
  • Seijun Suzuki
Release date: 2007-01-29
Run time: 84 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.46

Review Tokyo Drifter [1966] / Yume Pictures:


Review Paramount Pictures UK / Top Gun [Special Edition]
Actors & Directors
  • Kelly McGills
  • Tony Scott
  • Tom Cruise
Release date: 2007-01-23
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.51

Review Top Gun [Special Edition] / Paramount Pictures UK:


Review Warner Home Video / Batman - Gotham Knight [Blu-ray] [2008]
Release date: 2008-07-14
Run time: 73 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £8.99

Review Batman - Gotham Knight [Blu-ray] [2008] / Warner Home Video:


Review Momentum Pictures / Universal Soldier [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • Jerry Orbach
  • Dolph Lundgren
  • Roland Emmerich
  • Ally Walker
  • Ed O'Ross
  • Jean-Claude Van Damme
Release date: 2001-05-28
Run time: 99 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £2.90

Review Universal Soldier [1991] / Momentum Pictures:

Universal Soldier offered director Roland Emmerich and screenwriter Dean Devlin their first venture before going on to make a mountain of money as the creators of Independence Day and Godzilla. Teaming up for this action flick disguised as a science fiction thriller, muscle hunks Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren play embattled Vietnam soldiers who kill each other in combat. They are subsequently revived 25 years later as semi-android "UniSols" in a high-tech army of the near future. Their memories were supposedly wiped clean, but flashbacks occur to remind them of their bitter hatred (Lundgren committed wartime atrocities; Van Damme had tried to stop him) and the warriors resume their tenacious battle while a journalist (Ally Walker) uncovers the truth about the secret UniSol program. With energy to spare, the standard action sequences are adequate for anyone with a short attention span. And besides, with Van Damme and Lundgren in the lead roles, who needs dialogue? -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review Tartan Video / Oldboy (1 Disc) [2003]
Actors & Directors
  • Choe Min-Sik
  • Chan-Wook Park
Release date: 2007-02-01
Run time: 115 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £12.49

Review Oldboy (1 Disc) [2003] / Tartan Video:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Roadkill [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Paul Walker
  • Steve Zahn
Release date: 2003-02-17
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £1.35

Review Roadkill [2002] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Director John Dahl has made more ingenious thrillers than Roadkill, but few with quite its sense of terrible consequences arising from a minor prank. On a road trip, jailbird Fuller (Steve Zahn) persuades his younger, student brother Lewis (Paul Walker) to pretend to be a girl on a CB radio; they set a pushy trucker up with a date with an obnoxious guest at the motel where they stay for the night. The results are far from funny-the guest ends up dead and they find themselves being chased for a while by a large sinister truck. And then, when they have picked up Veena (Leelee Sobieski), the girl with whom Lewis is in love, it all gets worse, much worse. Dahl has picked up on one of the most sinister aspects of hostage situations, which is that quite minor concessions in negotiation can often be more meaningful than they seem. If the film has a weakness it is that the irresponsibility of the two young men is eminently plausible and not especially sympathetic, and the trucker, rather like the faceless driver in Steven Spielberg's Duel, is never more than a monstrous force of nature. Along the way, though, Roadkill delivers an appropriate number of thrills and sudden reversals, which all makes for an exciting journey into terror. On the DVD: Roadkill on disc has commentaries by the director, by the writers and by stars Steve Zahn and Leelee Sobieski; it also has a fascinating wealth of alternate endings including one in which the whole third act of the movie goes in a radically different direction. It has a widescreen anamorphic visual ratio 2. 35:1 and vibrant Dolby 5. [+]
1 sound that pumps up the tension in some crucial scenes. -Roz Kaveney.

Browse Action & Adventure:

Models & Brands:
Conspiracy [2001], The Jackal [1998], The Martin Scorsese Collection : Goodfellas Special Edition / After Hours / Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore / Who's That Knocking At My Door (5 Disc Box Set), The Contract [2006], Bond Remastered - Goldfinger (1-disc) [1964], Savage Streets: Special Edition [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Season 7 (REGION 1) (NTSC), Sullivan's Travels [1941], The Flight Of The Phoenix [1965], Howl's Moving Castle [2005], The Princess Bride [1987], Fighter In The Wind, The High And The Mighty [1954], Agent Cody Banks 2 - Destination London [2004], Tokyo Drifter [1966], Top Gun [Special Edition], Batman - Gotham Knight [Blu-ray] [2008], Universal Soldier [1991], Oldboy (1 Disc) [2003], Roadkill [2002]

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