The Aviator

The Aviator [DVD] [2004]
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Price:

£4.43 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
From Hollywood's legendary Cocoanut Grove to the pioneering conquest of the wild blue yonder, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator celebrates old-school filmmaking at its finest. We say "old school" only because Scorsese's love of golden-age Hollywood is evident in his approach to his subject--Howard Hughes in his prime (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in his)--and especially in his technical mastery of the medium, which reflects his love for classical filmmaking of the studio era. Even when he's using state-of-the-art digital trickery for the film's exciting flight scenes (including one of the most spectacular crashes ever filmed), Scorsese's meticulous attention to art direction and costume design suggests an impassioned pursuit of craftsmanship from a bygone era; every frame seems to glow with gilded detail. And while DiCaprio bears little physical resemblance to Hughes from the film's 20-year period (late 1920s to late '40s), he efficiently captures the eccentric millionaire's golden-boy essence, and his tragic descent into obsessive-compulsive seclusion. Bolstered by Cate Blanchett's uncannily accurate portrayal of Katharine Hepburn as Hughes' most beloved lover, The Aviator is easily Scorsese's most accessible film, inviting mainstream popularity without compromising Scorsese's artistic reputation. As compelling crowd-pleasers go, it's a class act from start to finish. --Jeff Shannon

Synopsis
Martin Scorsese's THE AVIATOR is a lavish spectacle of a motion picture that harks back to Hollywood's Golden Era in telling the story of Howard Hughes, one of 20th-century America's most pioneering and influential figures. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the eccentric billionaire, Scorsese's biopic concentrates on Hughes's life between the 1920s and '40s, when he made some of his most striking contributions to both the film and aviation industries. At only 25 years of age, Hughes directed the most expensive film ever made up to that point, HELL'S ANGELS (1930), which Scorsese gleefully recreates here in all its sprawling, audacious glory. At the same time, he became known as an unabashed playboy, bedding the likes of Jean Harlow (singer Gwen Stefani), Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), and Katherine Hepburn (a brilliant Cate Blanchett). In the mid-'30s, he turned his attention to the aviation industry, where he quickly became a world-renowned celebrity for shattering speed and distance records. He also continued to test the limits of flight technology, building bigger, faster, and stronger aircrafts. All the while, he struggled with an obsessive-compulsive mental disorder that sent him into a full-fledged tailspin after a near-fatal plane crash. The film concludes with Hughes being called to the Senate in '47 to defend himself against nefarious Senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda), who accused Hughes of taking money from the United States government during wartime. Stunningly photographed by Robert Richardson, Scorsese's nearly three-hour drama features an impassioned performance by DiCaprio, who is also credited as an executive producer. Although she appears in less than a third of the film, Blanchett delivers a performance that cements her status as one of the finest actresses ever to appear on the big screen.

Order Now!

Matchstick Men

Matchstick Men [2003] [DVD]
Directed by Ridley Scott

Price:

£2.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Special Features
Making Matchstick Men -- Pre-Production, Production & Post-Production features (approx 25 mins each)
Commentary by Director Ridley Scott, Writer Nicholas Griffin and Writer/Produce Ted Griffin
Languages: English, French, Italian
Subtitles: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Arabic, Dutch, English SDH & Italian SDH
Aspect ratio: 16:9

Synopsis
Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage) is a conman and trickster who has had to overcome enormous problems with obsessive-compulsive disorder in order to stay on top of his game. His partner in crime, Frank Mercer (Sam Rockwell), helps him run a daily business conning housewives out of their money with telephone scams. Frank is frustrated with their small-fry clientele however, and urges Roy to look for bigger business ventures. Roy resists Frank's urges, and instead leads a bizarre existence in which he is completely dominated by his compulsions to clean, eat canned tuna every night, and open his front door three times before he can walk through it. His world is turned upside down, however, when he starts seeing a shrink who helps Roy to get in touch with his missing 14-year-old daughter, Angela (Alison Lohman). Angela soon becomes embroiled in Roy and Frank's scams, pushing Roy to take on a grandiose scheme that could give them financial security for the rest of their lives.
Directed by Ridley Scott, this fast-paced crime drama takes several twists and turns as it works its way towards a surprising conclusion. Cage is perfectly cast as the con artist beset by neuroses and family problems, and has an excellent foil in the younger, more abrasive Rockwell. Weaving a tale of trust, family, friendship and deceit, director Scott utilises the talents of his actors to delve into complicated themes, resulting in a breathtaking film in which nothing can be taken for granted.

Order Now!

Cemetery Junction [Blu-ray]

Cemetery Junction [Blu-ray] [2010]
Directed by Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant

Price:

£15.93 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
It might be lower key and less overtly comedic than you may be expecting from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, but there are plenty of reasons nonetheless to commend their nostalgic 70s drama Cemetery Junction. Leaving behind the style of comedy the pair fine-tuned to perfection with The Office, Cemetery Junction instead concerns itself with telling the story of three young men.

These men all live in their home town of Cemetery Junction, each working for an insurance company. Joining them there is their boss, played by Ralph Fiennes, with the cast also fleshed out by the likes of Emily Watson, Gervais himself and the terrific Matthew Goode.

But it’s Christian Cooke who catches the eye in what turns out to be the lead role of Freddie. It’s Freddie’s evolving professional and personal life that forms the core of the narrative, and laced with some fine comedic moments, he anchors the film well. It helps that Gervais and Merchant are so focused on how to put across the story, with the dingy style of 70s Britain captured terrifically well.

It’s quite a low key project, perhaps, and it doesn’t tread too much in the way of new ground. But Cemetery Junction is nonetheless fine work, and a quality British movie. It’s well worth seeking out. --Jon Foster

Stills from Cemetery Junction (click for larger image)

DVD Description
From the award-winning team behind the hit series The Office. 70s' England is in full swing as three outcast friends find themselves drinking, joking, fighting and chasing girls, while dreaming of escape from their blue-collar hometown of Cemetery Junction. Freddie (Christian Cooke) is a salesman suddenly thrown onto the fast track when he gains the attention of his boss, Mr. Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes). Torn between a prior life of partying with his friends (Tom Hughes and Jack Doolan) and the promise of a brighter future, life gets more complicated when the bosses daughter becomes the focus of Freddie’s affection. Also starring Ricky Gervais and Emily Watson.

Synopsis
Playing out against the glamorous backdrop of Reading during the 1970s, CEMETERY JUNCTION (a nod to the stretch of road of the same name) focuses on a small group of colourful characters that work for an insurance company. Written, directed and produced by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the film marks the duo's first collaboration for the big screen and features a cast that includes the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson and Gervais himself.

Order Now!

Tokyo Story (Blu-ray + DVD)

Tokyo Story (Blu-ray + DVD) [1953]
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu

Price:

£12.93 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Synopsis
Yasujiro Ozu's most widely distributed and best-known film presents the story of an elderly couple in post World War II Japan who come to Tokyo to visit their various children and realise that the family has essentially fallen apart. The couple is received coldly by their two modernized children and only their widowed daughter-in-law seems glad to see them. The children shuttle their aging parents off to a health spa in an attempt to get them out of the way. They learn later that the mother has fallen ill upon her return and arrive too late to say their good-byes.

Order Now!

Inn Of The Sixth Happiness

Inn Of The Sixth Happiness [DVD] [1958]
Directed by Mark Robson

Price:

£3.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
An epic and extraordinary true story--or, at least, an extraordinary story based on a novel (Alan Burgess's The Small Woman) based on a true story. Gladys Aylward (an improbably mesmerizing Ingrid Bergman) is a British would-be missionary with an obsession about China. As she has no experience, the Missionary Society won't let her go, but she goes anyway, alone, to a remote northern province. She is hated, then loved; finally she becomes both a significant political figure and the heroine of a miraculous escape in which she shepherds 100 children to safety across the mountains just ahead of a Japanese invasion. Curt Jurgens is suitably stony as Lin Nan, the half-Dutch, half-Chinese military officer who falls in love with her, and a visibly ailing Robert Donat (who died before this, his final film, was released) is the wily local mandarin who sees and makes use of her extraordinary abilities. Directed by Mark Robson, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is a sweeping, stirring tearjerker, a big tale told in a big landscape with acres of orchestrated strings by Malcolm Arnold. A beautiful and beautifully made film that's a classic of the "everyone said I couldn't but I did it anyway" genre. --Richard Farr

Synopsis
A drama which centres around missionary Gladys Aylward who leads a group of children to safety.

Order Now!

Leaving Las Vegas [DVD]

Leaving Las Vegas [DVD] [1995]
Directed by Mike Figgis

Price:

£3.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the most critically acclaimed films of 1995, this wrenchingly sad but extraordinarily moving drama provides an authentic, superbly acted portrait of two people whose lives intersect just as they've reached their lowest depths of despair. Ben (Nicolas Cage, in an Oscar-winning performance) is a former movie executive who's lost his wife and family in a sea of alcoholic self-destruction. He's come to Las Vegas literally to drink himself to death, and that's when he meets Sera (Elisabeth Shue), a prostitute who falls in love with him--and he with her--despite their mutual dead-end existence. They accept each other as they are, with no attempts by one to change the other, and this unconditional love turns Leaving Las Vegas into a sombre yet quietly beautiful love story. Earning Oscar nominations for Best Director (Mike Figgis), Best Adapted Screenplay (Figgis, from John O'Brien's novel) and Best Actress (Shue), the film may strike some as relentlessly bleak and glacially paced, but attentive viewers will readily discover the richness of these tragic characters and the exceptional performances that bring them to life. (In a sad echo of his own fiction, novelist John O'Brien committed suicide while this film was in production.) --Jeff Shannon

Synopsis
With LEAVING LAS VEGAS, director Mike Figgis spun critical gold out of what would appear to be a maudlin and hackneyed premise--a down-and-out drunk meets a hooker with a heart of gold. The reason for the film's success lies partly in its refusal to moralize, but mostly it is the strong performances of Nicholas Cage and Elisabeth Shue that make the story believable and poignant. Ben Sanderson (Cage) is a Hollywood screenwriter who has become an alcoholic. After being fired, he takes his severance pay to Las Vegas, where he plans to drink himself to death. There he meets Sera (Shue), a streetwise prostitute who responds both to Ben's wild antics and to his absolute gentleness. What Sera needs most is to be needed, and Ben needs her a lot. Figgis uses his whole bag of tricks--Sera talks to the camera, the exteriors are shot in grainy 16mm--but finally it is the perfectly-conceived relationship between these two wounded people that drew the rave reviews. The film was based on a novel by John O'Brien.

Buy & read user review

Carve Her Name With Pride

Carve Her Name With Pride [1958] [DVD]
Directed by Lewis Gilbert (II)

Price:

£5.93 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Synopsis
CARVE HER NAME WITH PRIDE is based on the heroic true story of Violette Szabo. Violette, fluent in French, volunteered to parachute into France to work as a secret agent alongside the French Resistance during World War II. After being captured by the Germans she refused to reveal the identities of her comrades to the Gestapo despite being tortured.

Buy & read user review

10 Rillington Place

10 Rillington Place (Special Edition) [1970] [DVD]
Directed by Richard Fleischer

Price:

£3.97 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

DVD Description
Based on Ludovic Kennedy's invetigative book, this is the true and horrifying story of mass-murderer John Christie, chillingly played by Richard Attenborough. When Timothy Evans (John Hurt) and his wife (Judy Geeson) move into Christie's tiny flat, they do not know that he has already killed several young women, their bodies buried in the back garden of the house. When Christie offers to help Beryl Evans have an abortion, neither she nor her husband know that it is just the latest plan Christie has hatched to lure yet another woman to her death. Killing her and her young baby, Christie manages to pin the blame on Evans, who is soon afterwards hanged. Years go by and more deaths, and it is only when he moves away from the scene of his crimes, the death-house at 10 Rillington Place in London, that fate transpires to put a stop to his crimes, and the wrongful hanging of Evans is exposed.

Special Features

* Introduction to the DVD by Sir Richard Attenborough
* Commentary by John Hurt
* Exclusive interview with Sir Richard Attenborough
* Fact Files
* Vintage Lobby Cards
* Filmographies

Synopsis
London, 1944. John Reginald Christie (Richard Attenborough) is digging in his backyard when he comes across a woman's leg. Without being bothered at all, he covers up the leg and continues to bury the woman he just strangled in his kitchen. Three years later, Timothy Evans (John Hurt), along with his wife, Beryl Evans (Judy Geeson), and their baby, rents a flat in the same building--10 RILLINGTON PLACE. The young couple struggles to live on Timothy's minuscule pay while Christie insidiously inserts himself into their lives. He manipulates the pregnant Beryl and the illiterate Timothy until they believe he will perform an abortion on Beryl. However, Christie has other plans...
This chilling account of the notorious Timothy Evans case is the fourth in director Richard Fleischer's series of movies based on real-life murder cases, following THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING, COMPULSION, and THE BOSTON STRANGLER. Fleischer makes potent use of his unnerving, off-kilter camera set-ups in the cramped interiors of 10 RILLINGTON PLACE. Hurt gives a fine performance as the simple Timothy, and Attenborough is riveting as the unctuous and manipulative Christie.

Buy & read user review

Make It Happen

Make It Happen [DVD] [2008]
Directed by Darren Grant

Price:

£3.49 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Synopsis
From the creators of STEP UP and SAVE THE LAST DANCE comes MAKE IT HAPPEN. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (FINAL DESTINATION 3, DEATH PROOF) stars as a young woman who embarks on a quest to fulfil her life-long ambition to become a professional dancer and in doing so, inadvertently discovers some new moves.

Buy & read user review

The Towering Inferno

The Towering Inferno [1975] [DVD]
Directed by Irwin Allen, John Guillermin

Price:

£3.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
Disaster movies used to work because there was little certainty as to who would survive. Not so in this film, really an amalgam of two original stories, about a group of well-to-do celebrants at the top floor of a skyscraper. Cheapo electrical wiring and bad construction management cause an enormous blaze at the lower floors, steadily rising to consume the revellers. Newman's an architect, McQueen a firefighter and Fred Astaire a kind old gentleman, for which he was Oscar-nominated. OJ Simpson plays a security guard who rescues a cat. Now that's a disaster. -- Keith Simanton, Amazon.com

Special Features
2.35 Wide Screen
DVD 9
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Pro Logic Surround English
Dolby Pro Logic Surround
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Trailer
Arabic\Bulgarian\English\Romanian

Synopsis
THE TOWERING INFERNO follows the rescue efforts of fire fighters as they battle to contain a raging fire that has engulfed the world's tallest skyscraper. As the flames reach ever higher, it's a race against time to save a group of people trapped on the top floor. Special effects-laden thriller starring Hollywood's finest; Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, and Fred Astaire. Winner of three Academy Awards.

Buy & read user review

The Desert Rats

The Desert Fox / The Desert Rats (2 Disc Box Set) [DVD] [1951]
Directed by Henry Hathaway, Robert Wise

Price:

£4.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
James Mason plays Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in both The Desert Fox (1951) and The Desert Rats (1953), a WWII double-bill on DVD.

The Desert Fox, released six years after the end of the War, is a solemnly respectful tribute to Erwin Rommel, Germany's most celebrated military genius. James Mason's portrayal of this gallant warrior became a highlight of his career iconography. The film itself is oddly disjointed, though: a pre-credit commando raid to liquidate Rommel is followed by a flashback to the field-marshal's lightning successes commanding the Afrika Korps--a compressed account via documentary footage and copious narration (spoken by Michael Rennie, who also dubs Desmond Young, the Rommel biographer and one-time British POW appearing briefly as himself). The dramatic core is Rommel's growing disenchantment with Hitler (Luther Adler), his involvement in the plot to assassinate the Fuhrer, and his subsequent martyrdom.

The Desert Rats stars Richard Burton in only his second Hollywood role (between Oscar-nominated turns in My Cousin Rachel and The Robe), as a Scottish commando put in charge of a battalion of the 9th Australian Division defending Tobruk. The Aussies don't like him, and with a year of grim North African duty already under his belt, he's not too crazy about his new responsibilities either. The outfit is charged with staving off the battering assaults of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel for two months, to give the British Army time to regroup in Cairo and prepare for a counterattack. In the end, the "desert rats" play hell with the Desert Fox for 242 days, during which time they and their commander develop some mutual respect.

This is a solid, workmanlike World War II picture that, having been made in 1953 rather than 1943, can acknowledge a degree of eccentric humanity and soldierly professionalism in the enemy. Featured guest star James Mason reprises his Rommel from The Desert Fox, playing all his scenes in German except for a scene of ironical repartee with Burton. Another distinguished Brit, Robert Newton, gets costar billing as a boozy, self-confessed coward who used to be Burton's schoolmaster. However, a goodly number of Australians--including Chips Rafferty and Charles "Bud" Tingwell rate at least as much screen time. Robert Wise directed, with a trimness that reminds us he started out as an editor, and the pungent black-and-white cinematography is by Lucien Ballard. --Richard T. Jameson

Special Features

• The Desert Rats theatrical trailer
  
• The Desert Fox theatrical trailer
  
• Scene access
  
• Interactive menus

DVD Technical Information:

• Language: English (2.0 Stereo), French, Italian, German, Spanish (2.0 Mono)
  
• Main feature subtitles: Dutch, French, Italian, German, Spanish, English & German for the hearing impaired
  
• Full frame version 4:3
  
• Video Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
  
• Region Code: 2 PAL
  
• Black and white
  
• Running time:
  The Desert Rats: 84 minutes
  The Desert Fox: 84 minutes

Synopsis
James Mason is utterly convincing as Nazi Field Marshall Rommel, who gained notoriety for his successful North African campaigns during World War II. DESERT FOX portrays not only Rommel's victories and ultimate defeat, but also his personal doubts and conflicts with his superiors back in Berlin. The film's sequel, DESERT RATS, tells the story of a British captain (Richard Burton) who takes charge of a hopelessly outnumbered but stubbornly defiant Australian division in their heroic stand against Rommel and his Afrika Corps.

Buy & read user review