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Review Image Entertainment / The Bicycle Thief [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • Vittorio De Sica
  • Gino Saltamerenda
  • Lianella Carell
  • Lamberto Maggiorani
  • Enzo Staiola
  • Vittorio Antonucci
Release date: 1998-11-24
Run time: 93 min.
Creator: Luigi Bartolini
Price: £9.38

Review The Bicycle Thief [1948] / Image Entertainment:

Vittorio De Sica's remarkable 1947 drama of desperation and survival in Italy's devastating post-war depression earned a special Oscar for its affecting power. Shot in the streets and alleys of Rome, De Sica uses a real-life environment to frame his moving drama of a desperate father whose new job delivering cinema posters is threatened when a street thief steals his bicycle. Too poor to buy another, he and his son take to the streets in an impossible search for his bike. Cast with non-professional actors and filled with the real street life of Rome, this landmark film helped define the Italian neorealist approach with its mix of real life details, poetic imagery, and warm sentimentality. De Sica uses the wandering pair to witness the lives of everyday folks, but ultimately he paints a quiet, poignant portrait of father and son, played by Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola, whose understated performances carry the heart of the film. De Sica and scenarist Cesare Zavattini also collaborated on Shoeshine, Miracle in Milan, and Umberto D, all classics in the neorealist vein, but none of which approach the simple poetry and quiet power achieved in The Bicycle Thieves. -Sean Axmaker.

Review 20th Century Fox / The Blue Max [1966] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • John Guillermin
  • Ursula Andress
  • Jeremy Kemp
  • George Peppard
  • Karl Michael Vogler
  • James Mason
Release date: 2003-05-20
Run time: 156 min.
Creator: Gerald Hanley
Price: £5.89

Review The Blue Max [1966] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / 20th Century Fox:

The Blue Max is highly unusual among Hollywood films, not just for being a large-scale drama set during the generally cinematically overlooked Great War, but in concentrating upon air combat as seen entirely from the German point of view. The story focuses on a lower-class officer, Bruno Stachel (George Peppard), and his obsessive quest to win a Blue Max, a medal awarded for shooting down 20 enemy aircraft. Around this are built subplots concerning a propaganda campaign by James Mason's pragmatic general, rivalry with a fellow officer (Jeremy Kemp), and a love affair with a decadent countess (Ursula Andress) As directed by John Guillermin (best known for 1974's The Towering Inferno), the film's main assets are epic production values, great flying scenes and stunning dogfights. The weak point is the sometimes ponderous character drama, not helped by Peppard who is too lightweight an actor to convince as the driven anti-hero. Clearly influenced by Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1958), The Blue Max is a cold, cynical drama offering a visually breathtaking portrait of a stultified society tearing itself apart during the final months of the Great War. On the DVD: The Blue Max DVD's only extra is a very grainy original trailer presented at 1. 77:1. However, for the first time the film itself is complete to buy: the reel which was missing from the widescreen video release being restored here. Also included is the original intermission music. The film is presented anamorphically enhanced at a ratio approximating the original 2. [+]
35:1 CinemaScope, though some shots clearly have details cropped at the sides of the frame. Picture quality is good with an acceptable level of grain, which increases significantly during the brief back projection shots. There is a little print damage, but nothing too distracting and the aerial photography itself looks wonderful. The four-channel Dolby Prologic sound is excellent for a film of this age, with Jerry Goldsmith's superb score having richness and clarity and providing almost all the emotional impact. -Gary S Dalkin.

Review Deutsche Grammophon / Carmen - Bizet [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Mirella Freni
  • Olivera Miljakovic
  • Grace Bumbry
  • Herbert von Karajan
  • Justino Díaz
  • Jon Vickers
Release date: 2005-05-09
Run time: 163 min.
Creator: Prosper Mérimée
RRP: £19.99
Price: £11.02

Review Carmen - Bizet [1967] / Deutsche Grammophon:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Doctor Who The Android Invasion [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Ian Marter
  • Elizabeth Sladen
  • Tom Baker
Release date: 1995-03-06
Run time: 96 min.
Price: £11.99

Review Doctor Who The Android Invasion [1963] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Network / Beat The Devil [1953]
Actors & Directors
  • Jennifer Jones
  • Peter Lorre
  • John Huston
  • Robert Morley
  • Gina Lollobrigida
  • Humphrey Bogart
Release date: 2003-11-17
Run time: 89 min.
Creator: Truman Capote
RRP: £2.99
Price: £3.42

Review Beat The Devil [1953] / Network:


Review MGM / The Gary Cooper Gift Set (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Henry King
  • Henry Hathaway
  • Merle Oberon
  • H.C. Potter
  • Burt Lancaster
  • David Niven
  • Gary Cooper
  • Denise Darcel
  • Robert Aldrich
Release date: 2007-05-22
Run time: 371 min.
Creator: Borden Chase
Price: £19.90

Review The Gary Cooper Gift Set (REGION 1) (NTSC) / MGM:


Review Alpha Video / Horrors of Spider Island [1959] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Harald Maresch
  • Barbara Valentin
  • Rainer Brandt
  • Fritz Böttger
  • Alexander D'Arcy
  • Elfie Wagner
Release date: 2003-11-18
Run time: 77 min.
Creator: Wolf C. Hartwig
Price: £2.38

Review Horrors of Spider Island [1959] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Alpha Video:


Review Cinema Club / Farewell Friend
Actors & Directors
  • Bernard Fresson
  • Olga Georges-Picot
  • Charles Bronson
  • Alain Delon
  • Jean Herman
  • Brigitte Fossey
Release date: 2005-06-20
Run time: 110 min.
Creator: Sébastien Japrisot
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.43

Review Farewell Friend / Cinema Club:


Review Uca / Requiem For A Heavyweight [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Ralph Nelson
  • Mickey Rooney
  • Julie Harris
  • Anthony Quinn
  • Stanley Adams
  • Jackie Gleason
Release date: 2005-08-01
Run time: 82 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £1.09

Review Requiem For A Heavyweight [1962] / Uca:


Review Warner Home Video DO67387 / Queen Christina [1933]
Actors & Directors
  • John Gilbert
  • Ian Keith
  • Lewis Stone
  • Greta Garbo
  • Elizabeth Young
  • Rouben Mamoulian
Run time: 97 min.
Creator: Walter Wanger
Price: £8.99

Review Queen Christina [1933] / Warner Home Video DO67387:

To escape the burdens of rule, Swedens' Queen Christina rides into the countryside disguised as a boy. There she meets and secretly falls for a dashing Spanish envoy on his way to the royal court. Imagine the envoy's delighted surprise when he and the "nobleman" must share a bed at an overcrowded inn. Greta Garbo gives a luminous performance in this lavish costume drama, starring with her one-time off-screen fiancee John Gilbert and directed by Rouben Mamoulian. "It had been so enchanting to be a woman, not a queen. Just a woman, in a man's arms," Christina murmurs to her lover when her true identity is revealed. But she knows people will not accept her marriage to a foreigner. Torn between her duty and her heart, she must make a fateful decision.

Review Connoisseur Video / The Charge Of The Light Brigade [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Jill Bennett
  • John Gielgud
  • Vanessa Redgrave
  • Harry Andrews
  • Trevor Howard
  • Tony Richardson
Release date: 1994-09-12
Run time: 130 min.
Creator: John Osborne
RRP: £12.99
Price: £18.98

Review The Charge Of The Light Brigade [1968] / Connoisseur Video:


Review Yume Pictures / Ascent To Heaven [1951]
Actors & Directors
  • Luis Aceves Castaneda
  • Paz Villegas
  • Luis Bunuel
  • Esteban Marquez
  • Lilia Prado
  • Victor Perez
Release date: 2006-10-23
Run time: 75 min.
RRP: £13.99
Price: £7.98

Review Ascent To Heaven [1951] / Yume Pictures:


Review Warner Home Video / Point Blank [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Lee Marvin
  • Keenan Wynn
  • John Boorman
  • Angie Dickinson
  • Carroll O'Connor
  • Lloyd Bochner
Release date: 2000-05-15
Run time: 88 min.
Creator: Rafe Newhouse
RRP: £5.99
Price: £14.99

Review Point Blank [1967] / Warner Home Video:

Point Blank's hero, Walker (Lee Marvin), strides through Los Angeles with the steely stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and his best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting, did he return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel, set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and the eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed and assisted by Angie Dickinson as he desperately searches for someone, anyone, who can just give him his money. But if Walker is an extreme incarnation of the revenge-driven noir anti-hero, the modern syndicate has been transformed into a world of paper jungles and corporate businessmen: an alienating concept for the two-fisted, gun-wielding gangster. Boorman creates a hard, austere look for the film and scatters flashes of painful memory throughout the story, grafting the New Wave onto old genres with confidence and style. Haunting and brutal, Point Blank remains one of the most distinctive crime thrillers ever made. -Sean Axmaker, Amazon. com.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Abyss / Aliens / Planet Of The Apes / The Fifth Element / Minority Report [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Bruce Willis
  • Ed Harris
  • Franklin J. Schaffner
  • James Cameron
  • Kim Hunter
  • Luc Besson
  • Steven Spielberg
  • Maurice Evans
  • Gary Oldman
Release date: 2004-08-16
Run time: 679 min.
RRP: £39.99
Price: £16.99

Review The Abyss / Aliens / Planet Of The Apes / The Fifth Element / Minority Report [1967] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Anchor Bay / The Young Ones [1961] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Sidney J. Furie
  • Carole Gray
  • Cliff Richard
  • Robert Morley
  • Jet Harris
  • Hank B. Marvin
Release date: 2002-05-21
Run time: 108 min.
Creator: Ronald Cass
Price: £3.74

Review The Young Ones [1961] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Anchor Bay:

The three nostalgic British musicals in the Cliff Richard DVD Collection are a good reminder that, thanks to a few short years in the 1960s, Sir Cliff can legitimately include "film star" on his already exceptional show business CV. The Young Ones (1961), Summer Holiday (1963) and Wonderful Life (1964) would make tame fare for a teen audience today, but they retain a polished and honest charm which might surprise the sharpest of cynics. First and foremost, of course, they were Cliff Richard vehicles: designed to showcase his all-round talents and capitalise on his first, heady wave of pop chart success. They are also unashamed homages to the heyday of the MGM B-musical with familiar themes: let's put on a show/save the youth club/make a film. But with up-and-coming directors Sidney Furie and Peter Yates making imaginative and sophisticated use of wide-angle camera work and fresh, snappy choreography by Herbert Ross and Gillian Lynne, they also have plenty of assets other than Cliff's wholesome appeal. There are some fine set pieces and surreal flashes, notably the history of cinema in Wonderful Life and the extraordinary mime sequence in Summer Holiday. They also tap into the very British energy of a group of young actors and dancers including Una Stubbs, Susan Hampshire, Melvyn Hayes and Richard O'Sullivan, as well as Cliff's band at the time, The Shadows. For sheer verve, they deserve to be seen on their own merits. On the DVD: The Cliff Richard DVD Collection has been pristinely restored; the colours and clarity, not to mention the use of Cinemascope, leap off the screen (aspect ratio 2. 35:1). [+]
The mono soundtrack recreates the authentic bandbox sound of the 1960s. Aside from theatrical trailers, the most notable extras are directors' commentaries: actually Furie and Yates in occasionally long-winded conversation with film and music writers. Both men give fascinating insight into the film-making climate in Britain in the early 1960s. -Piers Ford.

Review Warner Home Video / Grand Hotel [1932]
Actors & Directors
  • Joan Crawford
  • John Barrymore
  • Greta Garbo
  • Edmund Goulding
  • Lionel Barrymore
  • Wallace Beery
Release date: 2000-03-20
Run time: 107 min.
Creator: William A. Drake
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.80

Review Grand Hotel [1932] / Warner Home Video:


Review Warner Home Video / The Cruel Sea [1953]
Actors & Directors
  • Charles Frend
  • Donald Sinden
  • John Warner
  • John Stratton
  • Denholm Elliott
  • Jack Hawkins
Release date: 2005-04-18
Run time: 121 min.
Creator: Nicholas Monsarrat
RRP: £13.99
Price: £12.10

Review The Cruel Sea [1953] / Warner Home Video:

Nicholas Monsarrat's novel is an unflinching, realistic and emotionally involving account of naval life during the Second World War in which the "heroes" are the men, the "heroines" the ships and the "villain" is not so much the German U-Boats lurking below as "the cruel sea" itself. This 1953 film has become a classic of British cinema largely because it is a straightforward, no-frills adaptation of the book and retain's much of the original's compelling yet almost understated dramatic focus. On convoy duty in the North Atlantic, the crew of HMS Compass Rose face as a matter of routine the threat of destruction from U-Boats as well as a constant struggle against the elements. The convoys themselves are Britain's only lifeline and their loss would lead to certain defeat, but in the early years of the war the ships sent to protect them can do almost nothing to prevent the U-Boat attacks. Jack Hawkins gives one of his finest performances as Captain Ericson, the commander who has to balance destroying the enemy against saving the lives of the men under his care. In one unforgettable scene-a crucial turning point for all the characters-he must decide whether to depth charge a suspected submarine despite the presence of British sailors in the water. As with the book, the individual officers and their lives are carefully delineated, helped by the strength of a cast of (then) young actors (notably Donald Sinden and Denholm Elliot). Ultimately what makes The Cruel Sea such an undeniable classic is that it has neither the flag-waving jingoism nor the war-is-hell melodrama so common to most war movies: instead it relates in an almost matter-of-fact way the bitterness of the conflict at sea fought by ordinary men placed in the most extraordinary of circumstances. -Mark Walker.

Review Warner Home Video / Caged [1950] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Hope Emerson
  • Betty Garde
  • Agnes Moorehead
  • John Cromwell
  • Ellen Corby
  • Eleanor Parker
Release date: 2007-06-26
Run time: 96 min.
Creator: Virginia Kellogg
Price: £5.52

Review Caged [1950] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review Second Sight Films Ltd. / High Noon [1952]
Actors & Directors
  • Lloyd Bridges
  • Fred Zinnemann
  • Grace Kelly
  • Gary Cooper
  • Thomas Mitchell
  • Katy Jurado
Release date: 1997-11-10
Run time: 81 min.
Creator: John W. Cunningham
RRP: £5.99
Price: £7.48

Review High Noon [1952] / Second Sight Films Ltd.:

One of the greatest Westerns ever made gets the deluxe treatment on this superior disc. Written by Carl Foreman (who was later blacklisted during the anticommunist hearings of the 1950s) and superbly directed by Fred Zinnemann, this 1952 classic stars Gary Cooper as just-married lawman Will Kane, who is about to retire as a small-town sheriff and begin a new life with his bride (Grace Kelly) when he learns that gunslinger Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) is due to arrive at high noon to settle an old score. Kane seeks assistance from deputies and townsfolk, but soon realises he will have to stand alone in his showdown with Miller and his henchmen. Innovative for its time, the suspenseful story unfolds in approximate real time (from 10:40 a. m. to high noon in an 84-minute film), and many interpreted Foreman's drama as an allegorical reflection of apathy and passive acceptance of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist campaign. Political underpinnings aside, this remains a milestone of its genre (often referred to as the first "adult" Western), and Cooper is flawless in his Oscar-winning role. The first-rate DVD gives this landmark film all the respect it deserves, beginning with a digitally remastered transfer from the original film negative. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review 20th Century Fox / Sailor of the King [1953] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Roy Boulting
  • Jeffrey Hunter
  • Bernard Lee
  • Wendy Hiller
  • Michael Rennie
  • Peter van Eyck
Release date: 2007-04-24
Run time: 83 min.
Creator: C.S. Forester
Price: £6.00

Review Sailor of the King [1953] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / 20th Century Fox:


Models & Brands:
The Bicycle Thief [1948], The Blue Max [1966] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Carmen - Bizet [1967], Doctor Who The Android Invasion [1963], Beat The Devil [1953], The Gary Cooper Gift Set (REGION 1) (NTSC), Horrors of Spider Island [1959] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Farewell Friend, Requiem For A Heavyweight [1962], Queen Christina [1933], The Charge Of The Light Brigade [1968], Ascent To Heaven [1951], Point Blank [1967], The Abyss / Aliens / Planet Of The Apes / The Fifth Element / Minority Report [1967], The Young Ones [1961] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Grand Hotel [1932], The Cruel Sea [1953], Caged [1950] (REGION 1) (NTSC), High Noon [1952], Sailor of the King [1953] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

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