Queen Bee (1955) DVD5

An Academy Award nominee for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design, QUEEN BEE (1955) is the story of a manipulative socialite in Georgia who tries to control the lives of those around her to disastrous effect. In the tradition of a Southern Gothic melodrama by Tennessee Williams, this movie provides a showcase for Crawford's most aggressive, scheming seductress since her role in The Women.

Jennifer Stewart (Lucy Marlow) travels from the Midwest to the South, to stay at the home of her cousin Eva Phillips (Joan Crawford), who has been her benefactress. She finds the inhabitants of the Phillips home bitter. Eva's husband Avery (Barry Sullivan) is a beaten-down alcoholic, scarred by a mysterious car accident. Jud Prentiss (John Ireland) is Eva's former lover and now manages the family mill. Avery's sister Carol (Betsy Palmer) is in love with Jud but doesn't know about his past with Eva, nor the fact that she keeps attempting to seduce him. Over this brooding household rules Eva... the manipulative, possessive, passive-aggressive queen bee.

Director: Ranald MacDougall
Cast: Joan Crawford, Betsy Palmer, John Ireland, Fay Wray
Country: USA
Genre: Drama
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Lo straniero / The Stranger (1967) DVD9, DVD5

The Stranger is a literal (but still very cinematic) adaptation of the novel by Albert Camus.

Camus's central character, Meursault (Mastroianni) is a Frenchman living in occupied Algiers, profoundly alienated from the world around him. Unable to feel anything, he goes through the motions of his life. He feels nothing at his mother's funeral, he feels nothing at the sight of a man viciously abusing his girlfriend, and, most notably, he feels nothing as he kills an Arab on a sandy beach, in the blistering heat and blinding glare of the North African sun. In the trial that ensues, he is condemned not so much for his crime but for his cool, seemingly uncaring demeanor. Which makes him about as un-Viscontiesque a character as one can imagine.

It is a low-key but magnificent performance, played out against the arid scenery of northern Africa, capturing the blank alienation of Camus's existential anti-hero perfectly.

This is an intelligent and honest film but, while Visconti's and writing are admirable, even he is not quite able to reconcile Meursault's meandering motivelessness with the moral depths alluded to in the novel. Unsurprisingly, Camus's book proves a hard nut to crack as a movie, though this is a commendable attempt.
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

La venexiana / The Venetian Woman (1986) DVD5

Venice, 16th century: The young, handsome Jules arrives in the city. Staying for one night only before journeying on, he is looking for an erotic adventure. There is the attractive girl Valeria, whose husband is out of town. Jules is deeply stunned by her and a "date" is arranged at midnight. But someone else has laid eyes on him – the lonely widow Angela, said to be the most beautiful woman of Venice. Tough choice for Jules...

The screenplay is adapted from a 16th century theater play by an anonymous writer, and that play is clearly in the same vein as Boccaccio's 14th century story collection "Decameron", one of the most important and popular pieces of Italian Renaissance literature.

DVD5 | PAL 16:9 | 01:23:08 | 4.06 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Italiano
Subtitles: English, Italiano
Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: Mauro Bolognini
Cast: Laura Antonelli, Monica Guerritore, Jason Connery
Country: Italy
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

V: The Final Battle (1984) 2 x Blu-Ray

V: The Final Battle begins several months after the first miniseries ended.

After winning its first victories against the alien Visitors, the Resistance is growing ever stronger. But the Visitors are adapting too, strengthening their armor and security measures as they harvest Earth's water and Humanity itself for food. The good news is that there's an alien Fifth Column that's willing to help stop them… and the Resistance has discovered a bacteria that can kill the Visitors. Weaponized as a "red dust," it provides the perfect means to fight back. But the Visitors have a contingency plan—they'll use one of their "motherships" as a doomsday device to destroy the Earth if their efforts are defeated.

BD50 + BD25 | 1080p AVC | 267 min | 64 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: English

Director: Richard T. Heffron
Cast: Jane Badler, Michael Durrell, Robert Englund
Country: USA
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

V: The Original Miniseries (1983) Blu-Ray Warner Archive Collection

Our world changes forever with the arrival of the Visitors in mother ships. They seem friendly and human, but this familiar form hides a nasty enemy. The reptilian aliens have nefarious plans and will do anything to keep the populace from discovering them. Scientists are the primary target and are rounded up for "conversion" on the ships. Meanwhile, the Visitors mount a propaganda campaign to keep everyone subservient to their will. It's a brilliant strategy, but individuals like investigative reporter Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) and Dr. Julie Parrish (Faye Grant) mount a resistance. Their odds of survival are slim, but the determined group has a chance if they stick together. As the casualties rise, they enact a daring mission to strike at the Visitors and discover their true plans.

The Original V Mini Series was one of the most popular Sci-fi Television events of all time. An estimated 65 million people in the US alone tuned in to watch it.

Director: Kenneth Johnson
Cast: Jane Badler, Michael Durrell, Faye Grant
Country: USA
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Scorsese Shorts: What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963), It’s Not Just You, Murray! (1964), The Big Shave (1967), Italianamerican (1974), American Boy: A Profile of – Steven Prince 1978) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

"A filmmaker shows what his career will be in his first 150 feet of film," François Truffaut once wrote. He was talking about Jean Vigo at the time, but he might as well have been talking about Martin Scorsese, whose early short films — from the narrative works of his student years at New York University and immediately afterward to the midlength documentaries he made as his feature-filmmaking career was getting underway — reveal the energy, eclecticism, and invention that would make him one of the most exciting American directors of the seventies and, eventually, one of the great artists of our time.

Criterion's release of five early Martin Scorsese shorts reveals that the filmmaker knew the kind of artist he was and wanted to be at a young age. All of the films included in this set contain seeds of future Scorsese classics, and they're all formally playful and sophisticated, with lasting career reverberations: Four of the five shorts center around the rapture and mythology of storytelling, while the fifth plumbs the theme of self-annihilation that would become a Scorsese leitmotif. Collectively, the five films span two distinct periods in Scorsese's career: as an N.Y.U. student and graduate in the early-to-mid 1960s, and as a rising filmmaker in the mid-to-late '70s.

Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Ring of Spies / Shadow of Treason (1964) DVD5 and Blu-Ray Network

There have always been spies men and women who have pried for patriotism, for religion, for love... or for money. This intriguing drama is based on the true story of the Portland spy ring an unlikely Soviet operation active in southern England from the late 1950s until January 1961 when the core members were arrested.

A disgruntled Navy Clerk is transferred to a secret research establishment and is subsequently black-mailed/paid by Czech intelligence to procure secrets for them. He seduces the secretary who controls the most secret documents, and they enjoy the fruits of their treachery until the British authorities begin to close in on them.

This film rocked Britain because it showed that spies could be living in the most mundane and suburban of circumstances, literally next door to you.

It's interesting to see how 'real' espionage actually works, with a lot of screen time devoted to the details of how the spy ring actually operated. Both traitors were eventually caught and the film ends revealing what happened to them once the authorities got a hold of them.
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Crackers (1984) Blu-Ray Kino Lorber

Directed by Louis Malle, the award-winning French film-maker who gave us Pretty Baby, Atlantic City and Damage, this offbeat American comedy caper is actually a remake of the 1956 Italian movie, Big Deal on Madonna Street.

Crackers transposes the setting from Rome to San Francisco but keeps the group of quirky and clumsy criminals who plan a safe-cracking caper. The eccentric gang of thieves (including veteran actor Sutherland and then-newcomer Penn) attempts the burglary of a local pawnshop (owned by Warden) only to bungle the job in a series of escalating misadventures that comically highlight the ineptitude of the crew.

BD50 | 1080p AVC | 01:31:40 | 30 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Thriller

Director: Louis Malle
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Jack Warden, Sean Penn
Country: USA
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Cenere (1917) DVD5

The most important aspect of "Cenere" is that it was the only film in which appeared the eminent Italian stage actress Dame Eleonora Duse.
Set in Sardinia, a barren and disconsolate land, where Rosalia, a poor young mother, entrusts her only son to the natural father, who is well-off and already married. Before she leaves her boy, the woman gives to the child an amulet in order to protect him. The amulet will be the key to put him in connection with his old mother when the boy grows up.

DVD5 | PAL 4:3 | 00:39:09 | 1.57 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Italian intertitles
Subtitles: none
Genre: Drama

Directors: Febo Mari, Arturo Ambrosio
Cast: Eleonora Duse, Febo Mari, Nietta Mordeglia
Country: Italy
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Rat Race (2001) DVD9

A criminally underused John Cleese plays Donald Sinclair, an eccentric billionaire who's devised a new way to entertain highrollers at his Las Vegas hotel. Instead of decks of cards or spinning wheels, the game involves setting a group of randomly selected visitors to the hotel on a race to find $2 million that is stowed away in a train station locker in New Mexico. There aren't any rules, and the participants -- which include a guileless foreigner (Rowan Atkinson), a straightlaced attorney (Breckin Meyer), a disgraced football referee (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a scam artist team of brothers (Seth Green and Vince Vieluf), a mother and daughter meeting for the first time after 27 years (Whoopi Goldberg and Lanei Chapman), and a vacationing family (led by Jon Lovitz) -- have no idea that every step they take is being monitored remotely. Of course, all sorts of wacky hijinks ensue, ranging from a bus of crazed Lucille Ball fans to a talking cow dragged about by a hot air balloon.

DVD9 | NTSC 16:9 | 01:52:00 | 7.33 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English, Francais
Subtitles: English
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy

Director: Jerry Zucker
Cast: Breckin Meyer, Amy Smart, Whoopi Goldberg, Cuba Gooding Jr.
Country: USA, Canada
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Utvandrarna / The Emigrants (1971), Nybyggarna / The New Land (1972) 3 x DVD9 and 2 x Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

In every country there is a book which every schoolchild knows or an author who's embedded in the fabric of the culture. The Emigrants Suit, written by Wilhelm Moberg, comprises four books (The Emigrants, Unto a Good Land, The Settlers and The Last Letters Home). The novels are classics and considered to be amongst the best examples of Swedish literature. Adapting them to the screen was a daunting task but one Jan Troell was more than a match for. Along with Bengt Forslund, they condensed the tomes into two epic films, The Emigrants and The New Land.

The films tell the story of a group of poor country folk from the province of Smaland in Sweden. In over seven hours of considered yet riveting filmmaking, we follow their fortunes all the way to eventually settling in the United States. Set in 1850, there story largely revolves around Karl-Oskar Nilsson (Max von Sydow) and his wife, Kristina Johansdotter (Liv Ullmann). They live on a small farm with their four children, Karl-Oscar's parents and his wayward younger brother Robert (Eddie Axberg). Despite struggling to make ends meet on the small family farm, they vow to plough on. That changes after their eldest daughter dies due to the side-effects of malnutrition.

Along with Robert, several friends, family and other members of the province, they make the decision to emigrate to the United States. They dream of the promises of fertile land and freedom the new land offers. After an arduous and gruelling voyage, they disembark to find themselves in a strange country with highly limited grasp of the language. The family struggles on to build their new lives, with the perils of the natives and new country to contend with. Meanwhile, Robert tries to make his fortune in the Gold Rush.
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Early Women Filmmakers Collecton (1911-1940) 4 x Blu-Ray BFI

More women worked in film during its first two decades than at any time since. Unfortunately, many early women filmmakers have been largely written out of film history, their contributions undervalued. This necessary and timely collection highlights the work of 9 of early cinema's most innovative and influential women directors, re-writing and celebrating their rightful place in film history.

The BFI Early Women Filmmakers collection features a wide-ranging variety of fantastic work by female directors, writers and performers from the 1910s to the early 1940s, including Mabel Normand, Alice Guy Blache, Lois Weber, Dorothy Davenport, Germaine Dulac, Olga Preobrazhenskaya, Dorothy Arzner and Mary Ellen Bute. These women were technically and stylistically innovative, pushing the boundaries of narrative, aesthetics, and genre. Going back to the beginning of cinema, this collection makes visible the tremendous directorial contributions women made.

Clocking in at over 640 minutes of total content, including short documentaries that help to contextualise the films of these artists, this is a set that will keep anyone serious about film history busy for some time.
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Disputed Passage (1939) Blu-Ray Kino Lorber, DVD5

From Frank Borzage, the acclaimed director of 7th Heaven, Street Angel, Bad Girl, A Farewell to Arms, Desire, The Mortal Storm and Moonrise, comes this gripping story about the powerful healing ability of the human spirit.

John Wesley Beaven (John Howard, The Undying Monster), an understudy of Dr. 'Tubby' Forster (Akim Tamiroff, For Whom the Bell Tolls), esteemed professor of medicine and surgery, struggles to fully surrender to his teacher's philosophy of keeping the sterility of science separate from the warmth of the human spirit. His views are challenged after he falls in love with Lan Ying (Dorothy Lamour, Road to Morocco), a Chinese woman of American descent raised in Shanghai. Upon completion of paying a personal debt to her Chinese father, she promptly returns to John to accept his marriage proposal but is interjected by Forster claiming that she would ruin his life. When John becomes aware that Forster has interfered, he sets out to find his love in China.

Director: Frank Borzage
Cast: Dorothy Lamour, Akim Tamiroff, John Howard, Judith Barrett
Country: USA
Genre: Drama, War
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

An Unmarried Woman (1978) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

When writer-director Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman opened in 1978, it had the slogan, "She laughs, she cries, she feels angry, she feels lonely, she feels guilty, she makes breakfast, she makes love, she makes do, she is strong, she is weak, she is brave, she is scared, she is… an unmarried woman." This makes the film sound hokey, but it's actually an unpretentious look at a woman's life turned upside down.

Jill Clayburgh is terrific as Erica, a Manhattan gallery worker who has to forge a new life after her husband (a deliciously self-absorbed Michael Murphy) leaves her for a younger woman. Clayburgh delineates each stage of Erica's transformation into an independent woman – from abandonment and grief to anger, reconciliation, and empowerment – with delicacy and wit, and Mazursky captures the performance with a visual style that alternates elegant, formal compositions and freewheeling handheld camerawork to perfectly accentuate his title character's rollercoaster journey.

Director: Paul Mazursky
Cast: Jill Clayburgh, Alan Bates, Michael Murphy
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Perfect Friday (1970) Blu-Ray Kino Lorber

Mr. Graham (Stanley Baker, Accident, Lizard in a Woman's Skin) is a manager in a bank somewhere in London who is convinced that he has devised the perfect plan to get rich and retire in a foreign country with beautiful beaches. But to steal the money from the bank Mr. Graham needs two accomplices. This is where the stunningly beautiful Lady Britt Dorset (Ursula Andress, The 10th Victim, Red Sun) and her extravagant husband Lord Nicholas Dorset enter the picture. Both desperately need money to continue living beyond their means, but only Lady Dorset is brave enough to state the obvious. Graham seizes on their difficulties and suggests a bank robbery.

None of the three are to be trusted and a love triangle develops. A sum of 300,000 pounds is to be stolen from the vault under the bank's nose. The plan is clever and intricate, requiring Nick to impersonate a bank inspector on just the right day - the perfect Friday and exchange a box. All three have their own ideas and both men think they're going away with Britt at the end. A flat is rented and costumes purchased. The robbery eventually goes ahead without incident, but who goes away with Britt at Heathrow?

Director: Peter Hall
Cast: Ursula Andress, Stanley Baker, David Warner
Country: UK
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Thriller

Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

The Man from Morocco (1945) DVD5

When a group of idealistic freedom fighters arrive in France during World War II, following Franco's triumph in the Spanish Civil War, they find themselves being taken as political prisoners by the collaborationist Vichy government. Following two years in a prison camp, they are sent to build a railway in the relentless heat of the Sahara desert. Treated as less than humans, one makes a brave escape to return to London to find his lover who believes him to be dead. She is being romantically pursued by a man who is his greatest enemy – a traitor to the cause of freedom. As he holds the names of some 2000 men who are to be trusted in occupied France to help the cause of freedom, he is in very great danger with plans afoot to relieve him of both the names – and his life!

DVD5 | PAL 4:3 | 01:51:38 | 4.05 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: none
Genre: Action, Adventure

Director: Mutz Greenbaum (as Max Greene)
Cast: Anton Walbrook, Margaretta Scott, Mary Morris
Country: UK
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

The Comfort of Strangers (1990) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection, DVD9 and Blu-Ray BFI

Adapting the acclaimed novel by Ian McEwan, playwright and screenwriter Harold Pinter lends his trademark unnerving dialogue and air of creeping menace to this spellbinding study of power, control, and the frighteningly thin line between pleasure and pain.

Colin (Everett) and Mary (Richardson) are second-honeymooning in Venice, warily striving to repair the fissures in their stale relationship. A seemingly fortuitous encounter with the aristocratic Robert (Walken) bemuses them, his evident hospitality sitting uneasily with his unusually frank questions and confessions. But the suave tale-spinner also catalyses what remains of the couple's sexual feelings for each other, and as if mesmerised, they return to the palazzo he shares with his submissive wife (Mirren), only half oblivious to the dangers awaiting them...

Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson, Helen Mirren
Country: USA, Italy, UK
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Reflections of Evil (2002) 2 x DVD5

Now, there are cult movies and then there are CULT movies. There are movies that gradually find exposure and a dedicated audience. There are movies that barely make a whimper initially and take years to catch on. And, there are movies so notorious and/or scarce they become the stuff of back alley legend.
Damon Packard's Reflections of Evil (2002) may be the first modern, digital equivalent of the underground cult film.

Bob (played by Packard himself) is an obese, sugar addicted, quite possibly insane, street seller of cheap watches. He still lives with his mother, who despite her henpecking complains cannot control her weird son. Given to Tourretes-like screaming fits and gorging himself on sweets, Bob is a seeming magnet for violence, be it from random pedestrians, homeless people, or dogs that assault him as he walks around LA.

Flashbacks to 1971 reveal Bob as a kid with his mother and sister, Julie (Nicole Vanderhoff), taking a Universal Studios tour. Julie gets off the tram, wanders around the backlot, and stumbles upon a young Steven Spielberg making his first film Something Evil. She then meets the Golden Guru and his followers who entice her with drugs. After what can only be described as a 2001ish psychedelic nightmare, she apparently OD's and is sent into the afterlife where her ghostly spirit wanders. And, eventually, we come to find she is looking for Bob.

Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws

Die Russen kommen / The Russians Are Coming (1987), Karriere / Career (1971) DVD9 + DVD5 Edition Filmmuseum 107

In The Russians Are Coming, director Heiner Carow and screenwriter Claus Kuchenmeister tell the story of the final days of World War II from the perspective of a member of the Hitler youth. For this boy, an ardent devotee of National Socialism, the day that will later become known as "Liberation Day" in the GDR brings about the collapse of his entire world.

Originally included in the DEFA production schedule in 1966 as a reserve entry for the forthcoming 50th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967, the almost-finished film was aborted in 1968. It would not be completed until 1987. A DEFA film about fascism without an anti-fascist hero would have been unusual at any time, but The Russians Are Coming strayed too far from the dominant narrative and was inopportune.

This double DVD presents a new, restored version of the film and allows viewers their first ever opportunity to compare it with Career (1971), in which Heiner Carow made use of parts of the unreleased material from The Russians Are Coming.

Читать дальше...

Read more / Download movie Originally published at MovieWorld.ws