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Review Warner Home Video / Gods And Generals / Gettysburg [2003]
Actors & Directors
  • Stephen Lang
  • Jeff Daniels
  • Robert Duvall
  • Ronald F. Maxwell
  • George Allen (III)
  • Mark Aldrich
Release date: 2004-07-05
Run time: 452 min.
RRP: £30.99
Price: £8.93

Review Gods And Generals / Gettysburg [2003] / Warner Home Video:


Review 20th Century Fox / Platoon - Definitive Edition [1986]
Actors & Directors
  • Charlie Sheen
  • Johnny Depp
  • Tom Berenger
  • Willem Dafoe
  • Forest Whitaker
  • Oliver Stone
Release date: 2007-03-05
Run time: 115 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.69

Review Platoon - Definitive Edition [1986] / 20th Century Fox:


Review Warner Home Video / The Green Berets [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Irene Tsu
  • Aldo Ray
  • John Wayne
  • David Janssen
  • Luke Askew
  • John Wayne
  • Ray Kellogg
Release date: 2005-04-18
Run time: 136 min.
RRP: £13.99
Price: £3.93

Review The Green Berets [1968] / Warner Home Video:

Anyone who fought in Vietnam can tell you that the war bore little resemblance to this propagandistic action film starring and codirected by John Wayne. But Green Berets itself is not nearly as bad as its reputation would suggest; critics roasted its gung-ho politics while ignoring its merits as an exciting (if rather conventional and idealistic) war movie. Some notorious mistakes were made-in the final shot, the sun sets in the east!-and it's an awkward attempt to graft WWII heroics onto the Vietnam experience. But as the Duke's attempt to acknowledge the men who were fighting and dying overseas, it's a rousing film in which Wayne commands a regiment on a mission to kidnap a Viet Cong general. David Janssen plays a journalist who learns to understand Wayne's commitment to battling Communism, and Jim Hutton (Timothy's dad) plays an ill-fated soldier who adopts a Vietnamese orphan. -Jeff Shannon.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Redford
  • Strother Martin
  • Cloris Leachman
  • Katharine Ross
  • Paul Newman
  • George Roy Hill
Release date: 2006-05-22
Run time: 106 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £5.98

Review Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid [1969] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review MGM Entertainment / A Bridge Too Far [1977]
Actors & Directors
  • Sidney Hayers
  • Maximilian Schell
  • Dirk Bogarde
  • Ryan O'Neal
  • Richard Attenborough
  • Laurence Olivier
  • Liv Ullmann
Release date: 2000-11-13
Run time: 168 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.45

Review A Bridge Too Far [1977] / MGM Entertainment:

This massive 1977 adaptation by director Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) of Cornelius Ryan's novel features an all-star cast in an epic rendering of a daring but ultimately disastrous raid behind enemy lines in Holland during the Second World War. A lengthy and exhaustive look at the mechanics of warfare and the price and futility of war, the film is almost too large for its aims but manages to be both picaresque and affecting, particularly in the performance of James Caan. The impressive cast includes Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery, and Liv Ullmann among others. While not a classic war film, it nevertheless manages to be a consistently interesting and exciting adventure. -Robert Lane, Amazon. com.

Review MGM Entertainment / Vera Cruz [1954]
Actors & Directors
  • Sara Montiel
  • Cesar Romero
  • Gary Cooper
  • Robert Aldrich
  • Denise Darcel
  • Burt Lancaster
Release date: 2001-06-11
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.29

Review Vera Cruz [1954] / MGM Entertainment:

Vera Cruz was only director Robert Aldrich's second Western (his first, made a few months earlier, was the revisionist, pro-Native-American Apache), but it's such an assured, stylish affair that he might have been roaming the sagebrush for decades. In the aftermath of the American Civil War two lone adventurers make their way south of the border, where Mexico is fighting a civil war of its own to rid the country of the French-imposed Emperor Maximilian. Neither the dour Benjamin Trane (Gary Cooper) nor the grinning, devil-may-care Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) has much in the way of idealism, but Trane still retains a thin bitter edge of integrity, a quality quite alien to the cheerfully amoral Erin. In uneasy alliance, constantly looking to outwit or double-cross each other, the two find themselves escorting a beautiful French countess (Denise Darcel) and a shipment of gold across country. Cooper and Lancaster create a superb double-act, using their contrasted screen personas to point up the humour and the cynicism of the two mercenaries' relationship. Darcel makes less than she might of the femme fatale role, but there are relishable cameos from Cesar Romero as a suavely duplicitous aristo and Ernest Borgnine as another gringo with an exceptionally vicious streak. The script, according to Aldrich, was written on the run, "always finished about five minutes before we shot it", but you wouldn't guess it from the laconic wit of the dialogue. It looks great, too-Ernest Laszlo's widescreen photography makes the most of the handsome Mexican locations. With its irreverent take on the accepted moral conventions of the genre, Vera Cruz ushered in a new kind of Western, and its central love-hate relationship would be replayed in Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) and Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). On the DVD: Not much in the way of extras but the mono sound has been expertly remastered to the benefit of Hugo Friedhofer's spirited score. [+]
Above all, the film's presented in its full Superscope ratio (16:9), a blessed relief after all those years when it showed up panned-and-scanned on BBC1. If ever a movie needed widescreen, it's this one-if only to fit in all Burt's teeth. You can see why they called him "Crockery Joe". -Philip Kemp.

Review Universal Pictures UK / Johnny Guitar [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Ward Bond
  • Sterling Hayden
  • Nicholas Ray
  • Joan Crawford
  • Mercedes McCambridge
  • Scott Brady
Release date: 2006-09-18
Run time: 105 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.98

Review Johnny Guitar [1963] / Universal Pictures UK:

"I've never seen a woman who was more like a man," a character observes of Vienna (Joan Crawford), who has just opened a saloon that hasn't exactly endeared itself to the local townspeople. Emma (Mercedes McCambridge), the local sexually repressed, lynch-happy harpy, is particularly displeased. Vienna is wooed both by the Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) and by Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a peripatetic tough guy-turned-troubadour with whom she has a past. When the Kid's gang (which includes Ernest Borgnine) decides to knock over the bank before heading to California, Emma wants just about everyone in sight on the business end of a rope. Nicolas Ray's 1954 epic was considered one of the downright strangest Westerns of all time-the women were far tougher than the men (Johnny watches on laconically during the bank robbery, not bothering with heroics), and some saw in the film a bizarre allegory for the McCarthy Red scare. A half-century later, it's still a curious, intriguing piece of moral ambiguity from a time when such a thing ostensibly didn't exist. Hayden is an enigmatic presence, and Crawford's commanding star turn is what you'd expect. -David Kronke.

Review Uca Catalogue / The Night Of The Generals [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Anatole Litvak
  • Tom Courtenay
  • Juliette Greco
  • Peter O'Toole
  • Omar Sharif
  • Nigel Stock
Release date: 2004-10-11
Run time: 138 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.75

Review The Night Of The Generals [1966] / Uca Catalogue:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / The Guns Of Navarone (Special Edition) [1961]
Actors & Directors
  • J. Lee Thompson
  • Anthony Quayle
  • David Niven
  • Gregory Peck
  • Anthony Quinn
  • Stanley Baker
Release date: 2007-02-12
Run time: 150 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.51

Review The Guns Of Navarone (Special Edition) [1961] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Warlock [1959]
Actors & Directors
  • Dorothy Malone
  • Anthony Quinn
  • Henry Fonda
  • Edward Dmytryk
  • Richard Widmark
Release date: 2005-02-21
Run time: 116 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.89

Review Warlock [1959] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / The Blue Max [1966]
Actors & Directors
  • Jeremy Kemp
  • James Mason
  • Anton Diffring
  • George Peppard
  • John Guillermin
  • Ursula Andress
Release date: 2005-07-04
Run time: 149 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.78

Review The Blue Max [1966] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / The Complete War Collection (12 Discs)
Release date: 2006-11-06
RRP: £79.99
Price: £34.98

Review The Complete War Collection (12 Discs) / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Criterion / The Small Back Room [1949] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Cyril Cusack
  • Kathleen Byron
  • David Farrar
  • Milton Rosmer
  • Jack Hawkins
  • Emeric Pressburger
  • Michael Powell
Release date: 2008-08-19
Run time: 107 min.
Price: £16.26

Review The Small Back Room [1949] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Criterion:


Review MGM Entertainment / A Fistful Of Dollars [1964] [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Sergio Leone
  • Gian Maria Volontè
  • Monte Hellman
  • Wolfgang Lukschy
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Marianne Koch
  • Sieghardt Rupp
Release date: 2000-02-07
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.80

Review A Fistful Of Dollars [1964] [1967] / MGM Entertainment:

This is the movie that launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Before director Sergio Leone picked him out, Clint had played only a few bit parts in features plus his role as Rowdy Yates in the TV Western series Rawhide. Leone cast him for his stillness and physical presence, famously remarking that when Michelangelo was asked what he had seen in a particular block of marble, he said Moses, but that what he, Leone, saw in Eastwood was just that, a block of marble. Leone also claimed that it was he who gave the character his trademark cigar and poncho, though Eastwood has said he brought his own wardrobe to Italy. Whoever takes credit, A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari in Italian) was an extraordinary success when launched in Italy in 1964. Eastwood had to wait longer for it to be a hit in the USA. The film was based on Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, but Leone had forgotten to clear the copyright. Eventually a deal was done, but A Fistful of Dollars was not released in the USA until 1967. It scored an equally resounding success, as did its sequels in the Dollar Trilogy, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character, laconic, amoral, dangerous, as The Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the film's refreshing new take on the Western genre. [+]
Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children (women are virtually absent from the Trilogy). Instead it's every man for himself. Striking too was a new emphasis on violence, with stylised, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armoured breastplate. The popularity of the Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western, for example Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, but its most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himself, still in action at the age of 70. -Edward Buscombe.

Review United Artists / The Sergeants 3 [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Dean Martin
  • Peter Lawford
  • Sammy Davis Jnr
  • Joey Bishop
  • Frank Sinatra
Release date: 2008-05-13
Run time: 113 min.
Price: £5.13

Review The Sergeants 3 [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / United Artists:


Review Warner Home Video / The Searchers [HD DVD] [1956]
Actors & Directors
  • Jeffrey Hunter
  • John Wayne
  • John Ford
  • Natalie Wood
Release date: 2006-12-18
Run time: 119 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £4.75

Review The Searchers [HD DVD] [1956] / Warner Home Video:


Review Champion the Wonder Horse / The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse - Complete 6 DVD Set [1955]
Release date: 2005-09-19
Run time: 624 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £16.97

Review The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse - Complete 6 DVD Set [1955] / Champion the Wonder Horse:


Review MGM Entertainment / The Scalphunters [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Burt Lancaster
  • Shelley Winters
  • Telly Savalas
  • Ossie Davis
  • Sydney Pollack
  • Dabney Coleman
Release date: 2004-07-05
Run time: 99 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.22

Review The Scalphunters [1968] / MGM Entertainment:


Review ITV DVD / The Eagle Has Landed (Special Edition) [1977]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Caine
  • Larry Hagman
  • Robert Duvall
  • Jenny Agutter
  • John Sturges
  • Donald Sutherland
Release date: 2007-06-11
Run time: 145 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £7.00

Review The Eagle Has Landed (Special Edition) [1977] / ITV DVD:


Review Universal Pictures Video / Fort Apache (John Wayne) [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • Pedro Armendariz Jr.
  • Henry Fonda
  • Irene Rich
  • John Wayne
  • Guy Kibbee
  • John Ford
Release date: 2006-06-05
Run time: 122 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.97

Review Fort Apache (John Wayne) [1948] / Universal Pictures Video:

John Ford's 1948 classic stars John Wayne as a Cavalry officer used to doing things a certain way out West at Fort Apache. Along comes a rigid, new commanding officer (Henry Fonda) who insists that everything on his watch be done by the book, including dealings with local Indians. The results are mixed: greater discipline at the fort, but increased hostilities with the natives. Ford deliberately leaves judgments about the wisdom of these changes ambiguous, but he also allows plenty of room in this wonderful film for the fullness of life among the soldiers and their families-community rituals, new romances-to blossom. Fonda, in an unusual role for him, is stern and formal as the new man in charge; Wayne is heroic as the rebellious second; Victor McLaglen provides comic relief; and Ward Bond is a paragon of sturdy and sentimental masculinity. All of this is set against the magnificent, poetic topography of Monument Valley. This is easily one of the greatest of American films. -Tom Keogh.

Models & Brands:
Gods And Generals / Gettysburg [2003], Platoon - Definitive Edition [1986], The Green Berets [1968], Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid [1969], A Bridge Too Far [1977], Vera Cruz [1954], Johnny Guitar [1963], The Night Of The Generals [1966], The Guns Of Navarone (Special Edition) [1961], Warlock [1959], The Blue Max [1966], The Complete War Collection (12 Discs), The Small Back Room [1949] (REGION 1) (NTSC), A Fistful Of Dollars [1964] [1967], The Sergeants 3 [1962] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Searchers [HD DVD] [1956], The Adventures Of Champion The Wonder Horse - Complete 6 DVD Set [1955], The Scalphunters [1968], The Eagle Has Landed (Special Edition) [1977], Fort Apache (John Wayne) [1948]

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