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Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Bette Davis - All About Eve / Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte / Virgin Queen
Actors & Directors
  • Bette Davis
Release date: 2006-04-10
Run time: 353 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £9.96

Review Bette Davis - All About Eve / Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte / Virgin Queen / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Trinity Production Co. Ltd. / Beaufort
Actors & Directors
  • Joseph Cedar
Release date: 2008-06-23
Run time: 125 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.98

Review Beaufort / Trinity Production Co. Ltd.:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Two Days In Paris [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Adam Goldberg
  • Julie Delpy
  • Julie Delpy
Release date: 2007-12-26
Run time: 96 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £5.05

Review Two Days In Paris [2007] / Universal Pictures UK:

Julie Delpy, as well as a being a beautiful and talented actress, is a woman of many talents. Want the proof? Then Two Days In Paris, a warm and distinctly European-feel comedy that she also scripted and directed, is a terrific piece of evidence. It's one of 2007's most engaging surprises, too. Delpy previously co-scripted the wonderful Before Sunset, and Two Days In Paris has a similar feel. The film follows Delpy's Marion and Adam Goldberg's Jack as they spend time in the French capital, dealing with the assortment of issues and scenarios it throws up. Given that Marion is French and Jack is American, there are cultural issues that are explored. Yet it's a character piece at heart, and that's where the film's strength lies. Because the treat with Two Days In Paris is the quality of writing. With dialogue crucial to the film's success, Delpy's script generates engaging conversations and characters well worth spending time with. The film itself doesn't quite scale the heights of the aforementioned Before Sunset, but it's the film that comes the closest since to doing so. [+]
So if you fancy something a little off the beaten track, where character is crucial, the music is grand and the film never takes a cheap shot, then treat yourself to Two Days In Paris. And keep your eye on Julie Delpy; whether in front of or behind the camera, this is a woman with plenty to offer. -Jon Foster.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment (UK) / Factory Girl [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Sienna Miller
  • Hayden Christensen
  • Peter Bogdanovich
  • George Hickenlooper
  • Jimmy Fallon
  • Guy Pearce
Release date: 2007-09-10
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.24

Review Factory Girl [2007] / Paramount Home Entertainment (UK):

Charting the story of Edie Sedgwick, the infamous muse of Andy Warhol, Factory Girl is a diverting biopic, not one without some sizeable flaws, but one with reasons to commend it. As interesting for its portrayal of Warhol as well as Sedgwick, the film charts the latter's involvement in the former's life, following her descent into drug addiction and how her days took a downward turn. Still, it's hard to describe Factory Girl's take on all of this as the most objective of biopics, and it's frustrating in some ways, yet does continually retain your interest for the duration of your running time. Sienna Miller's portrayal of Sedgwick is fine, and certainly a career best, although Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol is perhaps the most impressive among the talented cast (which also features American Beauty's Mena Suvari and Star Wars' Hayden Christensen). The film around this cast is a little muddled, though, and does ask a fair amount of its audience in caring for characters who are put across with little compassion. But if you are willing to put some effort in, Factory Girl nonetheless does deliver a real glimpse into some very unconventional lives. It'll be interesting now to see how Sienna Miller builds on the performance; she certainly helps lift this film into one that's at least worth a viewing. -Jon Foster.

Review Warner Home Video / Blood Diamond (2 Disc Special Edition) [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Edward Zwick
  • Leonardo Di Caprio
  • Jennifer Connelly
  • Basil Wallace
  • Djimon Hounsou
  • Michael Sheen
Release date: 2007-06-18
Run time: 138 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £4.40

Review Blood Diamond (2 Disc Special Edition) [2006] / Warner Home Video:


Release date: 2009-02-02
Run time: 360 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £14.69

Review Kingdom - Series 2 / Acorn Media:


Review Simply Home Entertainment (Distribution) / The Glass Mountain [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Valentina Cortese
  • Dulcie Gray
  • Titto Gobbi
  • Michael Denison
Release date: 2008-04-14
Run time: 94 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.50

Review The Glass Mountain [1949] / Simply Home Entertainment (Distribution):


Review Nouveaux Pictures / La Dolce Vita [1960]
Actors & Directors
  • Anita Ekberg
  • Anouk Aimée
  • Marcello Mastroianni
  • Magali Noël
  • Yvonne Furneaux
  • Federico Fellini
Release date: 2004-09-27
Run time: 174 min.
Creator: Tullio Pinelli
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.98

Review La Dolce Vita [1960] / Nouveaux Pictures:

At three brief hours, Fellini's cynical, engrossing social commentary, La Dolce Vita, stands as his timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence, as extraordinarily played by Marcello Mastroianni, a man of paradoxical, emotional juxtapositions: cool but tortured, sexy but impotent. He dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position. He romanticises about finding true love but acts unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Instead, he engages in a ménage à trois, then frolics in a fountain with a giggling American starlet (bombshell Anita Ekberg), and in the film's unforgettably inspired finale, attends a wild orgy that ends, symbolically with its participants finding a rotting sea animal while wandering the beach at dawn. Fellini saw his film as life affirming (thus its title, "The Sweet Life"), but it's impossible to take him seriously. While Mastroianni drifts from one worldly pleasure to another, be it sex, drink, glamorous parties or rich foods, they are presented, through his detached eyes, as merely momentary distractions. His existence, an endless series of wild evenings and lonely mornings, is ultimately soulless and facile. Because he lacks the courage to change, Mastroianni is left with no alternative but to wearily accept and enjoy this "sweet" life. [+]
-Dave McCoy, Amazon. com.

Review Warner Home Video / The Bodyguard (Special Edition) [1992]
Actors & Directors
  • Gary Kemp
  • Bill Cobbs
  • Ralph Waite
  • Whitney Houston
  • Kevin Costner
  • Mick Jackson
Release date: 2005-02-07
Run time: 124 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.99

Review The Bodyguard (Special Edition) [1992] / Warner Home Video:


Review Contender Entertainment Group / A Harlot's Progress [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Toby Jones
Release date: 2008-01-14
Run time: 100 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.96

Review A Harlot's Progress [2006] / Contender Entertainment Group:


Review Uca / What Dreams May Come [1998]
Actors & Directors
  • Vincent Ward
  • Annabella Sciorra
  • Robin Williams
  • Jessica Brooks Grant
  • Max von Sydow
  • Cuba Gooding Jr.
Release date: 1999-11-15
Run time: 113 min.
Creator: Richard Matheson
RRP: £5.99
Price: £7.39

Review What Dreams May Come [1998] / Uca:

Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra star in this visually stunning metaphysical tale of life after death. Neurologist Chris and artist Annie had the perfect life until they lost their children in an auto accident; they're just starting to recover when Chris meets an untimely death himself. He's met by a messenger named Albert (Cuba Gooding Jr. ) and taken to his own personal afterlife-a freshly drawn world reminiscent of Annie's own artwork, still dripping and wet with paint. Meanwhile a depressed Annie takes her own life, compelling Chris to traverse heaven and hell to save Annie from an eternity of despair. The multitextured visuals seem to have been created from a lost fairy tale. Heaven recalls the landscape paintings of Thomas Cole and Renaissance architecture complete with floating cherubs, while hell is a massive shipwreck, an upside-down cathedral overgrown with thorns and a sea of groaning faces popping out of the ground (one of those faces is German director Werner Herzog). Williams is the perfect actor to play against the imaginative computer-generated imagery-he himself is a human special effect. But the lack of chemistry between Williams and Sciorra is painfully apparent, and the flashback plot structure flattens the story's impact despite its deeply felt examinations of the heart and the spirit. Still, there's no denying Eugenio Zanetti's triumphant production design and the Oscar-winning special effects, which create a fully formed universe that is at once beautiful, eerie, and a unique example of movie magic. [+]
-Shannon Gee.

Review Warner Home Video / Practical Magic [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Nicole Kidman
  • Sandra Bullock
  • Dianne Wiest
  • Goran Visnjic
  • Griffin Dunne
  • Stockard Channing
Release date: 1999-07-19
Run time: 100 min.
Creator: Robin Swicord
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.98

Review Practical Magic [1999] / Warner Home Video:

Actor Griffin Dunne improves a bit on his first film as a director, Addicted to Love, with this drama-comedy about a family of witches. Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock play spell-casting sisters of different temperaments: the former is a high-living, free-spirited sort, while Bullock's character is a homebody who can't get around a family curse that kills the men in their lives. A widowed single mom, Bullock gets into a jam with an abusive Bulgarian (Goran Visnjic) and is helped out by her sibling, but the result brings a good-looking, warm, inquisitive cop (Aidan Quinn) into their lives. The film has a variety of tonal changes-cute, scary, glum-that Dunne can't always effectively juggle. But the female-centric, celebratory nature of the film (the fantasies, the sharing, the witchy bonds) is infectious, and supporting roles by Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing as Kidman and Bullock's magical aunts are a lot of fun. -Tom Keogh.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Day After Tomorrow - Single Disc Edition [2004]
Actors & Directors
  • Jay O. Sanders
  • Dash Mihok
  • Dennis Quaid
  • Jake Gyllenhaal
  • Roland Emmerich
  • Emmy Rossum
Release date: 2004-10-18
Run time: 119 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.90

Review The Day After Tomorrow - Single Disc Edition [2004] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Supreme silliness doesn't stop The Day After Tomorrow from being lots of fun for connoisseurs of epic-scale disaster flicks. After the blockbuster profits of Independence Day and Godzilla, you can't blame director Roland Emmerich for using global warming as a politically correct excuse for destroying most of the northern hemisphere. Like most of Emmerich's films, this one emphasises special effects over such lesser priorities as well-drawn characters and plausible plotting, and his dialogue (cowritten by Jeffrey Nachmanoff) is so laughably trite that it could be entirely eliminated without harming the movie. It's the spectacle that's important here, not the lame, recycled plot about father and son (Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal) who endure an end-of-the-world scenario caused by the effects of global warming. So sit back, relax and enjoy the awesome visions of tornado-ravaged Los Angeles, blizzards in New Delhi, Japan pummelled by grapefruit-sized hailstones, and Manhattan flooded by swelling oceans and then frozen by the onset of a modern ice age. It's all wildly impressive, and Emmerich obviously doesn't care if the science is flimsy, so why should you? -Jeff Shannon.

Review Momentum Pictures / CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Miami - Season 2 Part 2
Actors & Directors
  • David Caruso
  • Adam Rodriguez
  • Khandi Alexander
  • Emily Procter
  • Rory Cochrane
Release date: 2006-02-20
Run time: 500 min.
RRP: £39.99
Price: £8.77

Review CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Miami - Season 2 Part 2 / Momentum Pictures:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Ang Lee
  • Sihung Lung
  • Yun-Fat Chow
  • Chen Chang
  • Ziyi Zhang
  • Michelle Yeoh
Release date: 2001-06-18
Run time: 115 min.
Creator: Kuo Jung Tsai
RRP: £19.99
Price: £1.50

Review Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon [2001] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is so many things: an historical epic on a grand scale, an Asian martial-arts flick with both great effects and fantastic fighting (choreographed by The Matrix's guru Yuen Wo Ping), a story of magic, revenge and power played with a posse of star-crossed lovers thrown in for good measure. Set during the Qing dynasty (the late 19th century), the film follows the fortunes of righteous warriors Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien (Asian superstars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh, respectively) whose love for one another has lain too long unspoken. When Li Mu Bai's legendary sword Green Destiny is stolen by wilful aristocrat's daughter Jen (exquisite newcomer Zhang Ziyi), who has been trained in the way of the gangster by Li Mu Bai's arch-rival Jade Fox, the warriors must fight to recover the mystical blade. The plot takes us all across China, from dens of iniquity and sumptuous palaces to the stark plains of the Western desert. Characters chase each other up walls and across roof and treetops to breathtaking effect, and Tan Dun's haunting, Oscar-winning East-West inflected score. Directed by Taiwanese-born Ang Lee and co-written by his longtime collaborator American James Schamus, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon joins the ranks of the team's slate of high-quality, genre-spanning literary adaptations. Although it superficially seems like a return to Ang's Asian roots, there's a clear throughline connecting this with their earlier, Western films given the thematic focus on propriety and family honour (Sense and Sensibility), repressed emotions (The Ice Storm) and divided loyalties in a time of war (Ride with the Devil). Nonetheless, a film this good needs no prior acquaintance with the director's oeuvre; it stands on its own. The only people who might be dismissive of it are jaded chop-socky fans who will probably feel bored with all the romance. Everyone else will love it. [+]
-Leslie Felperin On the DVD: As might be expected this superb anamorphic widescreen version of the original 2. 35:1 theatrical ratio presents Peter Pau's spellbinding cinematography in its full glory; the same goes for the Dolby 5. 1 audio track that showcases Tan Dun's haunting score. Annoyingly, however, the default language option is the dubbed English soundtrack, which means you have to select the original Mandarin version before playing. The extra features are good but not exceptional, with an obligatory "making-of" documentary and commentary from Ang Lee and James Schamus being the best options: the director and producer/cowriter chat amiably and in some detail about their martial arts version of Sense and Sensibility. But it's the breathtaking delight of the seeing the movie in such quality that really counts, and this disc does not disappoint. -Mark Walker.

Review Entertainment in Video / Stalingrad [1992]
Actors & Directors
  • Joseph Vilsmaier
  • Dominique Horwitz
  • Sebastian Rudolph
  • Thomas Kretschmann
  • Dana Vávrová
  • Jochen Nickel
Release date: 2001-10-22
Run time: 132 min.
Creator: Jürgen Büscher
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.51

Review Stalingrad [1992] / Entertainment in Video:

It's tempting to call the harrowing Stalingrad a World War II version of All Quiet on the Western Front, since both films take the perspective of ordinary German soldiers at ground level. Stalingrad surveys the misery of the battle of Stalingrad, the winter siege that cost the lives of almost one and a half million people-Russian defenders and German invaders alike. Not unlike Spielberg's approach to Saving Private Ryan, German director Joseph Vilsmaier rarely steps outside the action to comment on the higher purpose of the war, assuming the audience is aware of the evil of the Nazi regime. Instead, we simply follow a group of soldiers as they endure a series of gut-wrenching episodes, events that have the tang of authenticity and horror. Vilsmaier has a taste for symbolism and surreal touches, which only add to the unsettling sense of insanity this movie conjures up so well. -Robert Horton.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Four Brothers [2005]
Actors & Directors
  • Tyrese Gibson
  • Garrett Hedlund
  • Mark Wahlberg
  • Andre Benjamin
  • Terrence Howard
  • John Singleton
Release date: 2006-01-30
Run time: 104 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £2.55

Review Four Brothers [2005] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Bound by love for their slain adoptive mother, the brothers in Four Brothers form a unique quartet that gives John Singleton's film a razor's edge of redemption. It's a thin edge, to be sure, because while Singleton's urban Western pays homage to the Blaxpoitation films of the '70s (as he did with his remake of Shaft), it walks a fine line of credibility with a mythic vengeance plot (recalling John Wayne's 1965 hit The Sons of Katie Elder) that endorses violence as the last resort of a family under siege. When a saintly foster mother (Fionnula Flanagan) is gunned down in a convenience store, her only adopted sons (two white, two black, played respectively by Mark Wahlberg, Garrett Hedlund, Tyrese Gibson and Andre Benjamin) go after the killers, only to discover that their mother's death was not a random event. As they uncover a sticky web of criminal activity involving a local kingpin (Chiwitel Ejiofor), the character-driven plot races toward an inevitable showdown, with ex-con Wahlberg leading the way. Making excellent use of blue collar locations in Detroit, Singleton keeps the action moving fast enough that the film's lack of realism is easily ignored, and the well-drawn characters (including Terrence Howard as a tenacious detective) lend emotional dimension to an otherwise familiar revenge scenario. Four Brothers is manipulative, but it's filled with grace notes of rugged working-class humanity, and it definitely holds your attention. - Jeff Shannon.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Miller's Crossing [1990]
Actors & Directors
  • Albert Finney
  • Gabriel Byrne
  • John Turturro
  • Marcia Gay Harden
  • Ethan Coen
  • Joel Coen
  • Jon Polito
Release date: 2003-10-13
Run time: 110 min.
Creator: Dashiell Hammett
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.31

Review Miller's Crossing [1990] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Arguably the best film by Joel and Ethan Coen, the 1990 Miller's Crossing stars Gabriel Byrne as Tom, a loyal lieutenant of a crime boss named Leo (Albert Finney) who is in a Prohibition-era turf war with his major rival, Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito). A man of principle, Tom nevertheless is romantically involved with Leo's lover (Marcia Gay Harden), whose screwy brother (John Turturro) escapes a hit ordered by Caspar only to become Tom's problem. Making matters worse, Tom has outstanding gambling debts he can't pay, which keeps him in regular touch with a punishing enforcer. With all the energy the Coens put into their films, and all their focused appreciation of genre conventions and rules, and all their efforts to turn their movies into ironic appreciations of archetypes in American fiction, they never got their formula so right as with Miller's Crossing. With its Hammett-like dialogue and Byzantine plot and moral chaos mitigated by one hero's personal code, the film so transcends its self-scrutiny as a retro-crime thriller that it is a deserved classic in its own right. -Tom Keogh.

Review MGM Entertainment / The Bridge At Remagen [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • John Guillermin
  • Robert Vaughn
  • Bradford Dillman
  • E.G. Marshall
  • George Segal
  • Ben Gazzara
Release date: 2003-05-05
Run time: 112 min.
Creator: William Roberts
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.26

Review The Bridge At Remagen [1968] / MGM Entertainment:

Fine casting, rugged characters and authentic military detail make The Bridge at Remagen one of the best World War II action films of the 1960s. Based on actual incidents during the final Allied advance on Germany in March 1945, the story focuses on the US Army's exhausted 27th Armoured Infantry, assigned to seize the bridge at Remagen, on the Rhine river, to prevent 50,000 German troops from retreating to safety. Lt Hartman (George Segal) leads the mission, while a Nazi major (Robert Vaughn) defies orders by attempting to hold the bridge instead of blowing it up. With strong emphasis on war's harsher realities, the film's compelling characters illustrate the camaraderie of survivors and the heroism of mavericks in the thick of battle. Segal and Ben Gazzara effectively convey a hard-won friendship, and the film's dynamic action (filmed in Czechoslovakia and Italy) never overwhelms the story's emotional impact. This is highly recommended. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review ITV DVD / Educating Rita [1983]
Actors & Directors
  • Julie Walters
  • Lewis Gilbert
  • Maureen Lipman
  • Michael Caine
  • Michael Williams
  • Jeananne Crowley
Release date: 2003-10-20
Run time: 106 min.
Creator: Willy Russell
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.72

Review Educating Rita [1983] / ITV DVD:

Michael Caine and the knockout Julie Walters deliver a pair of wonderful performances in this endearingly bittersweet tale of a boozily burnt-out professor's tutoring of (and subsequent tutoring by) a free-spirited hairdresser determined to improve her lot in life. The basic plot won't exactly surprise anyone who's ever seen a movie before but the ace cast (particularly Caine, who's rarely this subtle) continually finds new directions to spin off from the rather rote path. Although the end result is perhaps just a little too convinced of its own adorability to attain classic status, this remains a rarity in the genre-a feel-good film that earns its emotions honestly. A nice change of pace for director Lewis Gilbert, who is perhaps better known for his contributions to the James Bond series. -Andrew Wright.

Browse Drama:

Models & Brands:
Bette Davis - All About Eve / Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte / Virgin Queen, Beaufort, Two Days In Paris [2007], Factory Girl [2007], Blood Diamond (2 Disc Special Edition) [2006], Kingdom - Series 2, The Glass Mountain [1949], La Dolce Vita [1960], The Bodyguard (Special Edition) [1992], A Harlot's Progress [2006], What Dreams May Come [1998], Practical Magic [1999], The Day After Tomorrow - Single Disc Edition [2004], CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Miami - Season 2 Part 2, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon [2001], Stalingrad [1992], Four Brothers [2005], Miller's Crossing [1990], The Bridge At Remagen [1968], Educating Rita [1983]

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