DVD Find the Perfect Gift    Send a Gift Certificate
Search 
Home › Classics
Release date: 2009-03-16
Run time: 800 min.
RRP: £29.99
Price: £21.99

Review The Mind Of Mr JG Reeder - The Complete Series [1960] / Network:


Review Cda Entertainment / 2001 : A Space Odyssey - Special Edition [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • William Sylvester
  • Keir Dullea
  • Daniel Richter
  • Leonard Rossiter
  • Stanley Kubrick
  • Gary Lockwood
Release date: 2001-06-11
Run time: 136 min.
Creator: Arthur C. Clarke
RRP: £39.99
Price: £9.61

Review 2001 : A Space Odyssey - Special Edition [1968] / Cda Entertainment:

A daring experiment in unconventional narrative inspired by Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Sentinel", 2001: A Space Odyssey is a visual tone poem (barely 40 minutes of dialogue in a 139-minute film) that charts a phenomenal history of human evolution. When Stanley Kubrick recruited Clarke to collaborate on "the proverbial intelligent science fiction film", it's a safe bet neither the maverick auteur nor the great science fiction writer knew they would virtually redefine the parameters of the cinema experience with the result. From the dawn-of-man discovery of crude but deadly tools in the film's opening sequence to the journey of the spaceship Discovery and metaphysical birth of the "star child" at film's end, Kubrick's vision is meticulous and precise. In keeping with the director's underlying theme of dehumanisation by technology, the notorious, seemingly omniscient, computer HAL 9000 has more warmth and personality than the human astronauts it is supposedly serving. (The director also leaves the meaning of the black, rectangular alien monoliths open for discussion. ) This theme, in part, is what makes 2001 a film like no other, though dated now that its post-millennial space exploration has proven optimistic compared to reality. Still, the film is timelessly provocative in its pioneering exploration of inner and outer-space consciousness. With spectacular, painstakingly authentic special effects that have stood the test of time, Kubrick's film is nothing less than a cinematic milestone-puzzling, provocative and perfect. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review 20th Century Fox / A Guide for the Married Man [1967] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Walter Matthau
  • Robert Morse
  • Inger Stevens
  • Jackie Russell
  • Sue Ane Langdon
  • Gene Kelly
Release date: 2005-09-06
Run time: 91 min.
Price: £17.02

Review A Guide for the Married Man [1967] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / 20th Century Fox:


Review MGM Entertainment / Two For The Seesaw [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Wise
  • Shirley Maclaine
  • Robert Mitchum
Release date: 2005-02-07
Run time: 114 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.54

Review Two For The Seesaw [1962] / MGM Entertainment:


Review Turner Home Entertainment / Without Reservations [1946] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • John Wayne
  • Don DeFore
  • Phil Brown
  • Anne Triola
  • Claudette Colbert
  • Mervyn LeRoy
Release date: 2007-05-22
Run time: 107 min.
Creator: Mae Livingston
Price: £4.80

Review Without Reservations [1946] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Turner Home Entertainment:


Review 20th Century Fox / Hello, Frisco, Hello [1943] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Jack Oakie
  • H. Bruce Humberstone
  • Laird Cregar
  • John Payne
  • Lynn Bari
  • Alice Faye
Release date: 2008-10-07
Run time: 99 min.
Creator: Robert Ellis
Price: £6.59

Review Hello, Frisco, Hello [1943] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / 20th Century Fox:


Review Network / Charley's (Big-Hearted) Aunt [1940]
Actors & Directors
  • Richard Murdoch
  • Graham Moffatt
  • Walter Forde
  • Moore Marriott
  • J.H. Roberts
  • Arthur Askey
Release date: 2007-04-23
Run time: 72 min.
Creator: Ralph Smart
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.92

Review Charley's (Big-Hearted) Aunt [1940] / Network:


Review Walt Disney Home Video / Swiss Family Robinson [1960]
Actors & Directors
  • Janet Munro
  • Sessue Hayakawa
  • James MacArthur
  • Ken Annakin
  • Dorothy McGuire
  • John Mills
Release date: 1994-04-18
Run time: 126 min.
Creator: Lowell S. Hawley
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.75

Review Swiss Family Robinson [1960] / Walt Disney Home Video:

The Disney touch is all over this grand, colourful version of the Johann Wyss adventure of a European family setting off for the new world of New Guinea. The film opens on a ship jostled and torn by a raging storm while a family struggles to make it through alive. Tossed into a reef near a deserted tropical island, father John Mills takes charge and the family soon turns their island prison into a veritable paradise. Their multi-level tree house, built in record time, is complete with running water and a working pipe organ scavenged from the ship, while their grand yard is abloom in English roses. As a tale of hardship and pioneer pluck it's pure fantasy, but as entertainment it's energetic and appealing. The island is impossibly populated by ostriches, zebras, lions and elephants, a private zoo that delights the youngest boy and offers plenty of comic relief. The two older brothers discover even wilder life when they rescue the prisoner of oriental pirates (led by hard-bitten Sessue Hayakawa). There's little real danger anywhere in the film: even the climactic battle with the pirates is a cartoonish affair, with coconut bombs and non-lethal booby traps, until the final desperate, deadly moments. Hardly a faithful adaptation of the novel, but a lush, beautifully shot film and an entertaining adventure safe for all ages. Dorothy McGuire co-stars as the proper, worry-prone mother. [+]
-Sean Axmaker.

Review Columbia TriStar / The Texican [1966] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Antonio Casas
  • Luz Márquez
  • Audie Murphy
  • Lesley Selander
  • Broderick Crawford
  • Diana Lorys
Release date: 2005-04-05
Run time: 91 min.
Creator: José Antonio de la Loma
Price: £6.71

Review The Texican [1966] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Columbia TriStar:


Review Turner Home Entertainment / Allegheny Uprising [1940] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • George Sanders
  • Brian Donlevy
  • Wilfrid Lawson
  • John Wayne
  • Claire Trevor
  • William A. Seiter
Release date: 2007-05-22
Run time: 80 min.
Price: £4.95

Review Allegheny Uprising [1940] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Turner Home Entertainment:


Review Walt Disney Home Video / Sleeping Beauty [1958]
Actors & Directors
  • Eric Larson
  • Bill Shirley
  • Eleanor Audley
  • Mary Costa
  • Bill Thompson
  • Wolfgang Reitherman
  • Verna Felton
  • Les Clark
  • Clyde Geronimi
Release date: 2002-03-04
Run time: 72 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £30.00

Review Sleeping Beauty [1958] / Walt Disney Home Video:

Disney's 1959 Sleeping Beauty was the studio's most ambitious effort to date, a lavish spectacle boasting a gorgeous waltz-filled score adapted from the music of Tchaikovsky. In the 14th century, the malevolent Maleficent (not dissimilar to the wicked queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) taunts a king that his infant Aurora will fatally prick her finger on a spinning wheel before sundown on her sixteenth birthday. This, of course, would deny her a happily-ever-after with her true love. Fortunately, some bubbly, bumbling fairies named Flora, Fauna and Merryweather are on hand to assist. It's not really all that much about the title character-how interesting can someone in the middle of a long nap be, anyway? Instead, those fairies carry the day, as well as, of course, good Prince Phillip, whose battle with the malevolent Maleficent in the guise of a dragon has been co-opted by any number of animated films since. See it in its original glory here, alongside Malificent's castle, which, filled with warthogs and demonic imps in a macabre dance celebrating their evil ways, manages a certain creepy grandeur. -David Kronke, Amazon. com.

Review Whe Europe Limited / Father's Little Dividend [1951]
Actors & Directors
  • Elizabeth Taylor
  • Billie Burke
  • Don Taylor
  • Joan Bennett
  • Vincente Minnelli
  • Spencer Tracy
Release date: 2004-01-26
Run time: 81 min.
Creator: Frances Goodrich
RRP: £4.99
Price: £0.98

Review Father's Little Dividend [1951] / Whe Europe Limited:


Review ITV DVD / The Saint - Vol. 1 - Episodes 1 And 2 - The Talented Husband / The Latin Touch [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Ivor Dean
  • Roger Moore
  • Larry Taylor
  • Justine Lord
  • Ricardo Montez
Release date: 2000-07-10
Run time: 100 min.
Creator: Lew Grade
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.95

Review The Saint - Vol. 1 - Episodes 1 And 2 - The Talented Husband / The Latin Touch [1962] / ITV DVD:

Stepping into the role of Leslie Charteris' "modern-day Robin Hood" Simon Templar (formerly played in films by smoothies like George Sanders), Roger Moore swiftly struck the right poses, adding a raised eyebrow to the character's established trademarks-a stick figure with halo, a whistled theme (co-composed by Charteris himself) and a quixotic commitment to adventure rather than decency. More clean-cut than the vigilante of the novels, Moore's Templar is a reformed thief (with an accent on reformed) whose adventures invariably involve a beautiful girl in trouble, an exotic locale established by stock shots and pantomime-level barroom sets with revolving fans on the ceiling, and "foreign" villains, played by familiar British character actors in false moustaches. The Saint ran from 1962 to 1969. Connoisseurs reckon the earlier, black and white shows are superior to the later colour seasons. From 1979 to 1980, there was a follow-up, The Return of the Saint, in which sufficiently ironic Ian Ogilvy donned Templar's polo neck, but the format seemed outmoded in comparison with The Sweeney and The Professionals. Volume One contains: "The Talented Husband" in which a playwright is found dead in suspicious circumstances, with guest star Shirley (Goldfinger) Eaton; and "The Latin Touch" which concerns a kidnapping in Rome, with Suzan Farmer and Warren (Alf Garnett) Mitchell. -Kim Newman.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Pink Panther [Blu-ray] [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Blake Edwards
  • Peter Sellers
  • David Niven
  • Claudia Cardinale
  • Robert Wagner
Release date: 2009-02-02
Run time: 110 min.
RRP: £22.99
Price: £14.98

Review The Pink Panther [Blu-ray] [1963] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Naxos / Jazz Icons - Nina Simone - Live in '65 And '68 [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Nina Simone
Release date: 2008-09-29
Run time: 67 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £11.13

Review Jazz Icons - Nina Simone - Live in '65 And '68 [1965] / Naxos:


Review Sony Wonder / Sesame Street: Bert & Ernie's Word Play [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Loretta Long
  • Jon Stone
  • Caroll Spinney
  • Eva Saks
  • Jim Martin
  • Jim Henson
  • Bob Schwarz
  • Jim Henson
  • Bob McGrath
  • Frank Oz
Release date: 2002-06-11
Run time: 60 min.
Price: £4.26

Review Sesame Street: Bert & Ernie's Word Play [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Sony Wonder:


Review 20th Century Fox / Where the Sidewalk Ends [1950] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Otto Preminger
  • Tom Tully
  • Dana Andrews
  • Gary Merrill
  • Bert Freed
  • Gene Tierney
Release date: 2005-12-06
Run time: 94 min.
Price: £6.25

Review Where the Sidewalk Ends [1950] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / 20th Century Fox:


Review Facets / Daisies [1967] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Ivana Karbanová
  • Marcela Brezinova
  • Vera Chytilová
  • Jirina Myskova
  • Jitka Cerhová
  • Marie Cesková
Release date: 2002-03-26
Run time: 74 min.
Creator: Pavel Jurácek
Price: £13.14

Review Daisies [1967] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Facets:


Review Warner Home Video / Hobson's Choice [1954]
Actors & Directors
  • David Lean
  • Prunella Scales
  • John Mills
  • Brenda De Banzie
  • Daphne Anderson
  • Charles Laughton
Release date: 2000-07-03
Run time: 102 min.
Creator: Wynyard Browne
RRP: £9.99
Price: £16.24

Review Hobson's Choice [1954] / Warner Home Video:

Britain's greatest ever film director David Lean wasn't feted for providing belly-laughs. His finest films, from Great Expectations (1946) to Lawrence of Arabia (1962) are resolutely sober, which is more than can be said of Henry Horatio Hobson in his wonderfully comic encounter with the moon in Hobson's Choice. Lean's only other comedy was Blithe Spirit (1945), but here he approaches matters of the heart with a surprising lightness of touch and wins a marvellous performance from Charles Laughton-himself soon to make his one and only film as a director, Night of the Hunter (1955). The setting is late-19th century Salford (the b/w location filming is exceptional), and widower Henry Hobson forbids his three daughters to marry to avoid paying their dowries. Romance will not be thwarted by economics, and much humorous conflict ensues, interspersed with some serious and even disturbing moments-the shaving scene when Laughton gets the DTs is a queasily unbalanced. Brenda De Banzie is splendidly spirited as the eldest daughter, Maggie, while her fiancie is played by the ever excellent John Mills, who would later win an Oscar for his part in Lean's much more serious love story, Ryan's Daughter (1970). -Gary S. Dalkin.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Bitter Victory [1957]
Actors & Directors
  • Nicholas Ray
  • Ruth Roman
  • Raymond Pellegrin
  • Richard Burton
  • Anthony Bushell
  • Curt Jurgens
Release date: 2007-06-04
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £13.23

Review Bitter Victory [1957] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Jean-Luc Godard once famously wrote, "The cinema is Nicholas Ray. " Much less famous is the movie that occasioned the observation. Bitter Victory marked Ray's ascension to "auteur" demi-god status in France. Unfortunately, American prints ran 20 minutes shorter than the Amère victoire seen in Europe, with the unsurprising result that this enigmatic film-so charged with suppressed desperation and rage, you can hear the neurons snapping-became well-nigh incoherent. It gets worse. The picture, a milestone in the deployment of CinemaScope for emotional subtlety and expressiveness, was dumped to television in a pan-&-scan version that made hash of its compositions and editing rhythm. And that's the only way it was seen, for decades. The setting is North Africa early in World War II. Two British officers, played by Curd Jürgens and Richard Burton, lead a commando team into the desert to attack a German post. Commander Jürgens doesn't know, but comes to suspect, that his wife (Ruth Roman) and Burton were involved sometime before Jürgens married her. [+]
The mission recedes into the background as the tension between the two men builds, and issues of ethics, cowardice, and the legitimacy of wartime killing are thrown into relief against the anvil of the desert. Jurgens was an opaque actor, but Burton etches a searingly modern portrait of an alienated soul whose mordant self-awareness avails him nothing; it's right up there with such Ray-directed landmark performances as James Dean's in Rebel Without a Cause and Humphrey Bogart's in In a Lonely Place. -Richard T. Jameson.

Browse Classics:

Models & Brands:
The Mind Of Mr JG Reeder - The Complete Series [1960], 2001 : A Space Odyssey - Special Edition [1968], A Guide for the Married Man [1967] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Two For The Seesaw [1962], Without Reservations [1946] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Hello, Frisco, Hello [1943] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Charley's (Big-Hearted) Aunt [1940], Swiss Family Robinson [1960], The Texican [1966] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Allegheny Uprising [1940] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Sleeping Beauty [1958], Father's Little Dividend [1951], The Saint - Vol. 1 - Episodes 1 And 2 - The Talented Husband / The Latin Touch [1962], The Pink Panther [Blu-ray] [1963], Jazz Icons - Nina Simone - Live in '65 And '68 [1965], Sesame Street: Bert & Ernie's Word Play [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Where the Sidewalk Ends [1950] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Daisies [1967] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Hobson's Choice [1954], Bitter Victory [1957]

Top headlines:
Search 
DVD Rental: try it for free