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Review MGM Entertainment / West Side Story [1961]
Actors & Directors
  • Russ Tamblyn
  • Robert Wise
  • Rita Moreno
  • Jerome Robbins
  • Natalie Wood
  • George Chakiris
  • Richard Beymer
Release date: 2000-09-11
Run time: 145 min.
Creator: William Shakespeare
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.45

Review West Side Story [1961] / MGM Entertainment:

The winner of 10 Academy Awards, this 1961 musical by choreographer Jerome Robbins and director Robert Wise (The Sound of Music) remains irresistible. Based on a smash Broadway play updating Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to the 1950s era of juvenile delinquency, West Side Story stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as the star-crossed lovers from different neighbourhoods-and ethnicities. The film's real selling points, however, are the highly charged and inventive song-and-dance numbers, the passionate ballads, the moody sets, colourful support from Rita Moreno, and the sheer accomplishment of Hollywood talent and technology producing a film so stirring. Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim wrote the score. -Tom Keogh West Side Story marked a small revolution in the history of the Hollywood musical when it was released in 1961. Enriched by Leonard Bernstein's marvellously brassy, challenging score-as redolent of the place as anything Gershwin ever wrote-the location shooting and aerial views of the Manhattan grid made New York a gritty backdrop to this modern interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. The film rightly became an instant classic which won ten Oscars and brought some of the greatest numbers in the era of the modern musical to a global audience. Everything gels, from Jerome Robbins' superlative choreography (he retains a director's credit with Robert Wise, although anxious studio bosses removed him from the film when costs started to mount), to Ernest Lehman's taught screenplay, some of Sondheim's most accessible early lyrics, and passionate, raw performances from the gang members and the lovers. For many of the cast, including Richard Beymer as Tony and Natalie Wood as Maria, the film represents a creative climax which wouldn't be surpassed during the remainder of their distinguished careers. Rita Moreno is an outstanding Anita, even with her songs disappointingly dubbed, and George Chakiris' sinewy, arrogant Bernardo is magnetic. [+]
The whole thing still thrums with a youthful, dramatic energy that even a modern equivalent like Moulin Rouge can't match. On the DVD: West Side Story thoroughly merits the attention to detail in this handsome Collector's Edition. The anamorphic (16:9) widescreen format reproduces the original cinema presentation, brilliantly serving the city panoramas and balletic fight scenes, as well as the softness of the love duets, while a newly processed Dolby Digital 5. 1 audio track brings Bernstein's score up as if the notes were still drying on the page. Extras abound. A "Remembering" documentary features significant contributions from director Robert Wise, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn and Rita Moreno. Die-hard fans will lap up the various galleries, comparisons, the original intermission music and even a complete copy of Ernest Lehman's screenplay. -Piers Ford.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Marilyn Monroe : The Diamond Collection (11 Disc Numbered Limited Edition Box Set) [1951]
Actors & Directors
  • Tony Randall
  • Anne Bancroft
  • Joshua Logan
  • Yves Montand
  • Roy Ward Baker
  • Jean Negulesco
  • Marilyn Monroe
  • Howard Hawks
  • Richard Widmark
  • Walter Lang
Release date: 2002-08-05
Run time: 999 min.
RRP: £78.99
Price: £40.00

Review Marilyn Monroe : The Diamond Collection (11 Disc Numbered Limited Edition Box Set) [1951] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Released to mark the 40th anniversary of her death in 1962, The Diamond Collection brings together all of Marilyn Monroe's films for 20th Century Fox. This handsome box set stands as a salutary reminder of the considerable achievements of an actress who still reigns supreme as the greatest screen goddess of them all. The uninitiated might be surprised at the versatility of someone whose legend is founded so much on her image as a sex symbol. In particular, her touching performance as the abused second-rate bar singer Cherie in Bus Stop (1956) is a rounded study of a woman still capable of dreaming when life has done everything to dull her. The box set as a whole offers plenty of evidence that while she certainly specialised in a unique and complex variation on the blonde bombshell stereotype-embodied in her timeless performances as Lorelei Lee (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and short-sighted Pola in How to Marry a Millionaire, both 1953-she could certainly diversify. The documentary, Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days, provides a sympathetic take on the troubles and behaviour which led to her being sacked from her final picture, Something's Got to Give. The presentation of the restored footage from that movie is less successful, though, as the glimpses of Monroe's incandescent screen presence, belying her illness and depression, leave a palpable sadness in their wake. Better by far to focus on her earlier work. Whatever the role, her luminous beauty and statuesque figure, combined with an unselfconsciously joyful sexuality and an on-screen vulnerability, were always at their best under the careful guidance of directors like Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger. These qualities continue to give her an enduring appeal. [+]
On the DVD: The Diamond Collection has been digitally restored using, for the most part, the original negatives, making this a sumptuous package for any Monroe fan. Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes are both presented in standard 4:3 ratio but the rest-filmed in Cinemascope and presented here in letterbox format-are certainly better-served by widescreen viewing. The colours, like Monroe, come alive. The sound quality is crisp and Monroe's singing-she had limited but genuine musical talent-has polished up well. Multiple extras include before-and-after restoration comparisons, trailers from various countries, stills and posters, and newsreel footage. Eleven discs of Marilyn in one box, this is a veritable feast indeed. -Piers Ford.

Review Elstree Hill Entertainment / Reefer Madness [1936]
Actors & Directors
  • Louis Gasnier
  • Dave O'Brien
  • Pat Royale
Release date: 2003-08-11
Run time: 64 min.
RRP: £2.99
Price: £1.13

Review Reefer Madness [1936] / Elstree Hill Entertainment:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Stowaway [1936]
Actors & Directors
  • William A. Seiter
  • Alice Faye
  • Robert Young
  • Shirley Temple
Release date: 2006-02-20
Run time: 86 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.01

Review Stowaway [1936] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review MGM / The Battle of Britain [Blu-ray] [1969] [US Import]
Actors & Directors
  • Isla Blair
  • John Baskcomb
  • Harry Andrews
  • Alexander Allerson
  • Michael Bates
Release date: 2008-06-03
Run time: 133 min.
Creator: Freddie Young
Price: £17.65

Review The Battle of Britain [Blu-ray] [1969] [US Import] / MGM:

Despite its manipulative grandiosity, this film is completely irresistible, for several reasons: it recounts the greatest air battle in history, creating the greatest aerial battle scenes in film history; it has a terrific cast (Harry Andrews, Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Curt Jurgens, Laurence Olivier, Nigel Patrick, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Robert Shaw, Patrick Wymark and Edward Fox); and it's technically very well made, thanks to the Bond team of producer Harry Saltzman and director Guy Hamilton and the great cinematographer Freddie Young. -Bill Desowitz.

Review Warner Home Video / Ride the High Country [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Mariette Hartley
  • Edgar Buchanan
  • Ron Starr
  • Joel McCrea
  • Randolph Scott
  • Sam Peckinpah
Release date: 2006-01-10
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: N.B. Stone Jr.
Price: £9.20

Review Ride the High Country [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review Yash Raj Films / Devdas [1955]
Actors & Directors
  • Dilip Kumar
  • Bimal Roy
  • Vyjayantimala
Release date: 2001-08-20
Run time: 161 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £2.99

Review Devdas [1955] / Yash Raj Films:


Review 4 Front Video / The Quiet Man [1952]
Actors & Directors
  • Maureen O'Hara
  • Victor McLaglen
  • John Wayne
  • John Ford
  • Barry Fitzgerald
  • Ward Bond
Release date: 1999-10-01
Run time: 124 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £5.98

Review The Quiet Man [1952] / 4 Front Video:

Blarney and bliss, mixed in equal proportions. John Wayne plays an American boxer who returns to the Emerald Isle, his native land. What he finds there is a fiery prospective spouse (Maureen O'Hara) and a country greener than any Ireland seen before or since-it's no surprise The Quiet Man won an Oscar for cinematography. It also won an Oscar for John Ford's direction, his fourth such award. The film was a deeply personal project for Ford (whose birth name was Sean Aloysius O'Fearna), and he lavished all of his affection for the Irish landscape and Irish people on this film. He also stages perhaps the greatest donnybrook in the history of movies, an epic fistfight between Wayne and the truculent Victor McLaglen-that's Ford's brother, Francis, as the elderly man on his deathbed who miraculously revives when he hears word of the dustup. Barry Fitzgerald, the original Irish elf, gets the movie's biggest laugh when he walks into the newlyweds' bedroom the morning after their wedding and spots a broken bed. The look on his face says everything. The Quiet Man isn't the real Ireland but as a delicious never-never land of Ford's imagination, it will do very nicely. -Robert Horton Blarney and bliss, mixed in equal proportions. [+]
John Wayne plays an American boxer who returns to the Emerald Isle, his native land. What he finds there is a fiery prospective spouse (Maureen O'Hara) and a country greener than any Ireland seen before or since-it's no surprise The Quiet Man won an Oscar for cinematography. It also won an Oscar for John Ford's direction, his fourth such award. The film was a deeply personal project for Ford (whose birth name was Sean Aloysius O'Fearna), and he lavished all of his affection for the Irish landscape and Irish people on this film. He also stages perhaps the greatest donnybrook in the history of movies, an epic fistfight between Wayne and the truculent Victor McLaglen-that's Ford's brother, Francis, as the elderly man on his deathbed who miraculously revives when he hears word of the dustup. Barry Fitzgerald, the original Irish elf, gets the movie's biggest laugh when he walks into the newlyweds' bedroom the morning after their wedding, and spots a broken bed. The look on his face says everything. The Quiet Man isn't the real Ireland, but as a delicious never-never land of Ford's imagination, it will do very nicely. -Robert Horton.

Review 20th Century Fox / Irving Berlin's Alexander's Ragtime Band [1938] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Tyrone Power
  • Don Ameche
  • Henry King
  • Jack Haley
  • Ethel Merman
  • Alice Faye
Release date: 2004-09-07
Run time: 106 min.
Creator: Richard Sherman
Price: £6.34

Review Irving Berlin's Alexander's Ragtime Band [1938] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / 20th Century Fox:


Review Universal Studios / Imitation of Life [1959] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Lana Turner
  • John Gavin
  • Sandra Dee
  • Susan Kohner
  • Douglas Sirk
  • Robert Alda
Release date: 2003-01-07
Run time: 125 min.
Creator: Allan Scott
Price: £5.40

Review Imitation of Life [1959] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Universal Studios:


Review Republic Pictures / Pursued [1947] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Judith Anderson
  • Raoul Walsh
  • Robert Mitchum
  • Alan Hale
  • Dean Jagger
  • Teresa Wright
Release date: 2003-01-21
Run time: 101 min.
Creator: Niven Busch
Price: £6.64

Review Pursued [1947] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Republic Pictures:


Review Walt Disney Video / The Parent Trap: The Parent Trap/The Parent Trap 2: 2 Movie Collection DVD (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • David Swift
  • Charles Ruggles
  • Una Merkel
  • Ronald F. Maxwell
  • Brian Keith
  • Hayley Mills
  • Maureen O'Hara
Release date: 2005-09-27
Run time: 210 min.
Creator: Stu Krieger
Price: £3.79

Review The Parent Trap: The Parent Trap/The Parent Trap 2: 2 Movie Collection DVD (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Walt Disney Video:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The House On 92nd Street [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • Signe Hasso
  • William Eythe
  • Henry Hathaway
  • Gene Lockhart
  • Lloyd Nolan
Release date: 2007-04-23
Run time: 85 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.97

Review The House On 92nd Street [1945] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Anastasia [1956]
Actors & Directors
  • Ingrid Bergman
  • Yul Brynner
  • Anatole Litvak
Release date: 2005-07-04
Run time: 101 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.47

Review Anastasia [1956] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Elstree Hill Entertainment / Meet John Doe [1941]
Actors & Directors
  • Frank Capra
  • Edward Arnold
  • James Gleason
  • Walter Brennan
  • Gary Cooper
  • Barbara Stanwyck
Release date: 2008-05-19
Run time: 122 min.
RRP: £4.99
Price: £3.86

Review Meet John Doe [1941] / Elstree Hill Entertainment:


Review Columbia Tri-Star Home Video / In Cold Blood [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Richard Brooks
  • Gerald S. O'Loughlin
  • John Forsythe
  • Scott Wilson
  • Paul Stewart
  • Robert Blake
Release date: 2006-02-20
Run time: 129 min.
Creator: Truman Capote
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.98

Review In Cold Blood [1967] / Columbia Tri-Star Home Video:

Richard Brooks's In Cold Blood is a faithful 1967 screen adaptation of Truman Capote's extraordinary non-fiction book about the course of two killers in this world-their lives, their senseless slaughter of an entire family, and their executions. Robert Blake and Scott Wilson are remarkable as the murderers, but what has kept this film special over the decades is Brooks's blunt, clearheaded, and non-sensational approach to the story. (The term "semi-documentary" has been applied to Brooks's style on this film, and it's an entirely fair description. ) The experience of watching In Cold Blood is naturally unsettling, but the director-as with Capote-leaves final judgments about justice to the beholder. -Tom Keogh.

Review Tartan Video / Summer Interlude [1950]
Actors & Directors
  • Maj-Britt Nilsson
  • Birger Malmsten
  • Georg Funkquist
  • Annalisa Ericson
  • Ingmar Bergman
  • Alf Kjellin
Release date: 2004-03-29
Run time: 91 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.40

Review Summer Interlude [1950] / Tartan Video:


Review Universal Pictures UK / The Song Of Songs [1932]
Actors & Directors
  • Lionel Atwill
  • Marlene Dietrich
  • Rouben Mamoulian
  • Brian Aherne
Release date: 2008-10-13
Run time: 86 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £9.41

Review The Song Of Songs [1932] / Universal Pictures UK:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Written On The Wind [1956]
Actors & Directors
  • Douglas Sirk
  • Dorothy Malone
  • Robert Stack
  • Lauren Bacall
  • Robert Keith
  • Rock Hudson
Release date: 2005-02-21
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.74

Review Written On The Wind [1956] / Universal Pictures UK:

Douglas Sirk puts the opera back into soap opera in this exquisitely baroque melodrama, the epitome of Technicolor gloss. Rock Hudson (as wonderfully wooden as ever) and Lauren Bacall play stalwart examples of altruism, clean living, and good old American ambition, but Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone steal the film as white trash millionaire siblings stewing in self-pity. The plot reads like an episode of Dallas: Texas oil-baron playboy Stack steals good girl Bacall from best friend Hudson while Stack's sister Malone puts her slinky moves on Hudson, the strapping poor boy made good. Toss in impotence, jealousy, alcoholic binges, emotional blackmail, and backstabbing nastiness, mix vigorously with high style and expressionist flourishes, and you've got the most potent melodrama cocktail of the 1950s. Stack twists his arch delivery into the practiced bravado of a boozing womanizer nursing an inferiority complex while Malone sashays and flirts her way through an Oscar-winning performance as a slutty, sassy good-time girl. It's so over the top that it might seem kitschy at first glance, but former theater director Sirk subtly shades his vision in the shadows of film noir and uses the portentous angles and gaudy color to create a vivid, vivacious world of glossy surfaces and social masks cracking under the pressure of responsibility and the pain of lost love. -Sean Axmaker.

Review Warner Home Video / Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1 [1933] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Jack Conway
  • Henry Kolker
  • Barbara Stanwyck
  • Alphonse Ethier
  • George Brent
  • Alfred E. Green
  • James Whale
  • Donald Cook
Release date: 2006-12-05
Run time: 308 min.
Creator: Gene Markey
Price: £20.24

Review Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1 [1933] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Browse Classics:

Models & Brands:
West Side Story [1961], Marilyn Monroe : The Diamond Collection (11 Disc Numbered Limited Edition Box Set) [1951], Reefer Madness [1936], Stowaway [1936], The Battle of Britain [Blu-ray] [1969] [US Import], Ride the High Country [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Devdas [1955], The Quiet Man [1952], Irving Berlin's Alexander's Ragtime Band [1938] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Imitation of Life [1959] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Pursued [1947] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Parent Trap: The Parent Trap/The Parent Trap 2: 2 Movie Collection DVD (REGION 1) (NTSC), The House On 92nd Street [1945], Anastasia [1956], Meet John Doe [1941], In Cold Blood [1967], Summer Interlude [1950], The Song Of Songs [1932], Written On The Wind [1956], Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1 [1933] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

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