This is without doubt the worst movie in existence. It beggars belief that somebody can actually get away with this. You would think that somebody somewhere at sometime would say to the director that this is just a pile of dog crap that needs shoveled up and put into an incinerator. Don't waste time and energy watching this and worse still don't under any circumstances pay out hard earned money for it. Walk away from it, you're not missing anything believe me.

5 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Having watched the original series from start to finish and thoroughly enjoyed it, I approached this new remake with some trepidation, knowing that remakes aren't always successful but this is one that bucks that trend. I really needn't have worried though because the casting is superb and the filming is amazing. I was already a big fan of Samuel West who plays Siegfried in this series and he doesn't disappoint. Nicholas Ralph as James Herriot is pretty good as well. I was disappointed that it didn't come out on blu-ray but maybe sometime in the future when they test the market with a DVD release. If you haven't seen it yet then keep an eye open for it, it doesn't disappoint

4 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Great storyline - superb acting all round. What more can you say. This is one of my wif'e's favourite films. This has some light and some very dark moments, based on a tue story from Hells Ktchen in NYC.
When we went to New York in 2013, we visited the area that this was based.on and had a good walk around.

Well worth seeing.

I'm not a huge Kevin Bacon fan but he is superb in this as are all the other big name stars including Brad Pitt, Minne Driver, Jason Patric, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro.

6 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Switched off half way through - Absolute rubbish. I don't usualy like to come across as being unkind but this was a waste of time

2 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

The astonishing true story of Hitler's private secretary coming to terms with working alongside unspeakable evil after remaining silent for nearly sixty years. In 1942, Traudl Junge was an apolitical 22-year-old chosen from a clerical pool to work as one of Adolf Hitler's private secretaries. Working day-in, day-out for Hitler, Junge viewed him as a surrogate father figure, private and polite, nothing like the crazed rhetorician of his speeches. Shielded from the knowledge of Hitler's acts of atrocity and convinced she was in the center of information, she was actually in a blind spot. As the Nazi regime teetered on destruction and Hitler plunged further into madness, Junge witnessed everything up to the final chaotic days in the bunker. Completed just months before Traudl Junge's death,BLIND SPOT: HITLER'S SECRETARY is a riveting personal history which demands to be seen by all.

5 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

It seems they intended this to be the first in a series titled Unforgettable Performances, but I see no sign of any further release. Their Vol. 101-120 were basically bands, while these are mainly vocals.
Video quality is very good. These were musical shorts filmed for theaters or television in the 1930s to early 1950s. I don't see followup DVD releases but these films are available in many compilations.
Nat King Cole sings Mona Lisa with makeup to make him look less black on some of these Snader films. He objected to the look and and the rest were filmed without that.
Looking at the girls, we get a Connie, a Connee, a Bonnie, and a Ginny before we get to a Teresa. The Dinning Sisters had the brother named Mark Dinning who sang Teenangel in 1960. Connie Haines' song is Duke Ellington's It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing.
Ada Leonard and Rio Rita were females leading all-girl bands. Far be it from them to just stand and swing a baton. Ada holds one but dances elegantly before the camera throughout. Rita (Dona Drake) gets vocalist Alan Ladd to hold the baton while she stands and flirts with him, and does some dancing too. She is a great looker, but not quite a pro dancer.
This tape has been the only source for Teresa Brewer's 1951 Snader film of Music Music Music. The Snaders were all recorded live, while the earlier Soundies were often dubbed and lip-synced.

6 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

The video quality is reasonable. A wide variety of early color cartoons. 3 complete Superman. Many Warner Brothers Looney Tunes including A Corny Concerto (1943). One Casper The Ghost, one Mighty Mouse, one Woody Woodpecker, one Betty Boop, four Paramount singalong.

5 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

I have never seen such a moving film. This is really a movie that should actually be seen in schools.

3 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Love & Pride 12" USA Mix, Won't You Hold My Hand Now, Alone Without You, The Taste Of Your Tears, Torture.[YouTube Video][YouTube Video][YouTube Video][YouTube Video][YouTube Video]

✔︎ Helpful Review?

All previous releases were missing the video of the pre-title sequence. Here it is finally restored. The packaging is not clear about the video shape. It turns out that they have used the entire picture area of the original 35 mm film, without cropping to the theatrical 1.66 shape. That means AR 1.37, leaving surplus image on top and bottom. The picture has been restored in high definition.
The nudity is still cut from the bathtub scene.
As for the movie, I don't call it "one of her best". Face it, it is her best.

6 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

One of the best musicals of all time. The first written together by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (words and libretto). Splendid tunes that became "classics" like "Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' ", "Oklahoma Waltz", "People Will Say We're In Love", "Out Of My Dreams", just to mention a few. A Must see.

3 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

A curious blend of dark, gritty and tragic with the bizarrely comic and absurd.

Still is, and ever will be Paul Thomas Anderson's Masterpiece (better than the overdone and just plain bleak Crash,

An ensemble character study of a collection of people who are either closely related or more loosely so, but all bearing some relationship to the others by degrees, and how those relationships change when set against a surreal set of circumstances which act as a catalyst:

...A couple pretty offensive types who are broken down during the course of the movie to reveal their humanity, while other more genial ones are revealed to have the darkest undertones, and even a few weaker people discovering some real strength,

A must see. Very moving, well orchestrated, quirky, odd, and has Philip Seymour Hoffman's most devastatingly human role as a carer for the terminally ill, Tom Cruise doing the full obnoxious bit (initially), and a brilliant set of soundtrack songs by Aimee Mann.

(but the whole cast is excellent too).

Watch it... Watch it now! :)

6 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

A very nice film set on the rugged landscape of central England.

3 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Slightly disappointed with this one, as a Sci-Fi fan, and would have to agree with this review... "It is a movie more for the critics and lovers of cinema art, and less for general public wanting some space sci-fi epic. It reminds me somewhat of "Gravity", a big build up, and a rather rushed/disappointing ending. Still, the cinematography is admittedly good, and a good soundtrack (Max Richter), so all is not lost, but if you are looking for aliens/other worlds, then look elsewhere.
personally, a 7/10 for me.

5 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

A very good Israeli film. Fierce, but reality. Both as on Palestinian and Israeli territory you cannot move freely as a gay person.

3 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Long ago that I saw such a scary movie. A Dutch film with excellent action moments. Make sure you have a pillow on hand to quickly hide behind.

2 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Of Benny Hill's 20-year run with Thames Television, the first half, in terms of overall quality, was infinitely better than the second half. When he started out with the company after an on-and-off run with the BBC dating back to the early 1950's, he was still offering some biting social commentary - his very first show for them contained a sketch about a newlywed couple whose bedroom of their honeymoon suite was split down the middle into American and Russian zones, and how the Cold War politics of the time ended up ruining what should have been a happy time. (By contrast, a new show starting out on the BBC called Monty Python's Flying Circus, on their second aired episode, had a sketch of the type that Benny would come to be accused of specializing in - a marriage guidance counselor who ogles the beautiful wife [Carol Cleveland, in her first appearance on that show] of a wimp.) His third special was the only instance of the show opening announcement: a) done on-camera, and b) handled by a woman (the lucky lass was Nicole Shelby). As the '70's unfolded, he would produce a bevy of sketches that were equal parts Carol Burnett, SCTV, The Electric Company (especially those with Rita Moreno as the short-fused director), Chevy Chase-era Saturday Night Live, Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton. Those sketches in the three B&W shows made during the 1970-71 ITV "colour strike" were definitely a laugh riot - and a vast improvement over the later '80's remakes. But when the decade ended, a storm cloud entered the horizon - Dennis Kirkland became the producer and director, and the show, especially in his earliest years on the job, became a de facto Playboy magazine of the air to the point where Hill would end up being perhaps the first victim of the "cancel culture" - especially in his home country of Britain.

Network Video's indexing practices are very peculiar indeed. Many of their titles have little or nothing to do with anything resembling cohesion, and seemed to have been done solely for the purpose of having ten "chapters" in each episode. U.S. A&E Video was more organized in that respect. But yet, the earliest editions in this set (to 1975) have the VTR slates for each show, and all have the various adcaps which are missing from A&E's Complete & Unadulterated sets.

6 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Imagine an enchanted fantasy world of timeless characters and magical moments where nothing goes right for the clumsy toymakers Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee. When a notorious scoundrel, Barnaby, demands to marry the beautiful Little Bo Peep, guess who secretly emerges as the blushing bride? Based on the original Babes in Toyland, this movie is a dazzling spectacle of 6-foot wooden soldiers, Mother Goose characters and the beloved team of Laurel and Hardy.

Spectacularly restored and presented in color, this release boasts superb graphics that are enhanced with a stunning stereoscopic 3D transfer. See the storybook characters come to life with imagery so real you feel you could reach out and touch it. It is like seeing this family favorite for the very first time, all over again!

4 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

The TV series 'Klown' ran from 2005-2009 and again in 2018, in which the actors used improvised comedy to portray ridiculous and often embarrassing family scenarios. The film is also improvised with one embarrassing scene after another, and is bawdy in the extreme so be careful who you watch it with. You have been warned!

rottentomatoes.com gives this spoiler-free synopsis:

Two wildly inappropriate friends run amok through the Danish countryside plowing through endless awkward confrontations and unspeakable debaucheries. Hopelessly wrongheaded Frank "kidnaps" the 12-year-old nephew of his pregnant girlfriend in an eager attempt to prove his fatherhood potential to join sex-crazed Casper on his secret adulterous weekend canoe trip. From exclusive brothels, hospitalizations, armed robberies and even prison, the three paddle downstream from one chaotic misadventure to the next culminating in a surprise sentimental portrait of friendship and a final shocking reveal that you won't soon unsee.

5 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Extract of online review from HERE
If you are not familiar with the film or its source material, The Magic Christian is essentially a “High concept” movie – it follows the exploits of an eccentric multimillionaire, Guy Grand (Peter Sellers), who takes a homeless young man (Ringo Starr) under his wing, and together the pair set about concocting a series of increasingly elaborate pranks and challenges in order to demonstrate that “everyone has their price”, having much fun at the expense of officious traffic wardens, arts snobs, privileged upper class twits, bigots, and the terminally trendy. Along the way, they use cash bribes to sabotage the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, that epitome of elitism and fair play, take a well-aimed shot at the world of advertising and boardroom yes-men, and we are presented with a memorable scene of the lovely Hattie Jacques discussing sex crimes and Nazi war atrocities, which I’m fairly sure never happened in Sykes.

Its mischief-making theme, with its frequent overturning of class and social sensibilities and surreal detours, has a lot in common with Cook and Moore’s Bedazzled (not least the pulchritudinous presence of Welch) and feels more like a series of comedy sketches than a movie with a long-form narrative. Its sketchiness is no surprise when one takes into account the influence of its star, Peter Sellers, a man for whom the adjective ‘difficult’ may have been invented; it’s well-documented in Python biographies that the Python sketch ‘The Mouse Problem’ was originally written for this film, but rejected by Sellers because, according to popular anecdote, his milkman didn’t find it funny.
It was Sellers who brought in Cleese and Chapman to assist with scripting The Magic Christian, after his endless impetuous tinkering had seen the film go through, in John Cleese’s words, “thirteen drafts by the time it got to us, Graham and I managed to put the script into shape in three or four weeks” before further interventions by McGrath (“A very nice man who had no idea about comedy structure”) saw the film “end up as a series of celebrity walk-ons.”
For his part, Ringo Starr is basically playing the version of himself that had been honed in numerous TV interviews and newsreels, not to mention the two Beatles movies, as a laconic, dreamy layabout prone to droll asides and non-sequiturs. It’s the kind of unaffected performance you only get from non-actors with natural charisma who are at ease in front of the camera (his dumb-show when demonstrating facial exercises [“Silent scream… Tiny mouth”] before an increasingly apoplectic Spike Milligan is worth the entrance price alone).

If you are a Python-head, The Magic Christian is also noteworthy as a small stepping stone between their pre-Python TV work for BBC, Rediffusion and Thames, and the Flying Circus. Cleese and Chapman both appear in the two self-written scenes that survived Sellers and Southern’s interventions, the former as a Sotheby’s employee aghast as Ringo vandalises a Dutch master, the latter looking ruggedly handsome as an oarsman for the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, but the film is strewn throughout with the kind of scenarios that became recognisable tropes in Python’s first BBC1 series when it aired later in 1969, most of them retained from Southern’s original novel: Eccentric behaviour in restaurants and art galleries, an upper-class hunting outing that soon gets wildly out of hand, a boardroom meeting full of fawning toadies constantly on the backfoot as they attempt to make the right noises in response to a mogul’s flights of fancy, and a brace of gags playing on drag and homoeroticism (It’s worth bearing in mind that such gags may seem reactionary now, but were transgressive in 1969 – it’s called progress). Another proto-Python element is the casting of broadcasters (in this case, Michael Aspel, Alan Whicker, Harry Carpenter) appearing as themselves, in the same way Python would later employ Reginald Bosanquet, Richard Baker and David Hamilton. Keen-eyed connoseiurs of queer cinema will also appreciate a cameo from Leonard Frey, aka Harold from ground-breaking gay drama The Boys In The Band.
Fabulous Films DVD release of The Magic Christian is, to all intents and purposes, a clone of the decade-old Universal mid-price DVD (right down to the packaging and menu screen), and as such offers no tantalising extras, not even an original trailer. The Magic Christian is a real curio of its time, with enough celebrity cameos and ‘60s British Cinema, Beatles and Python connections to appeal to a cross-section of fandoms for cultural and historical interest alone. And it’s good fun: Daft, silly, flawed, patchy, but rarely dull, with Sellers and Starr carrying the film with their infectious personalities alone – for better or worse, a shining example of “They don’t make them like that any more” and “Drugs in the sixties must have been REALLY good

3 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Extract of online review from HERE
If you are not familiar with the film or its source material, The Magic Christian is essentially a “High concept” movie – it follows the exploits of an eccentric multimillionaire, Guy Grand (Peter Sellers), who takes a homeless young man (Ringo Starr) under his wing, and together the pair set about concocting a series of increasingly elaborate pranks and challenges in order to demonstrate that “everyone has their price”, having much fun at the expense of officious traffic wardens, arts snobs, privileged upper class twits, bigots, and the terminally trendy. Along the way, they use cash bribes to sabotage the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, that epitome of elitism and fair play, take a well-aimed shot at the world of advertising and boardroom yes-men, and we are presented with a memorable scene of the lovely Hattie Jacques discussing sex crimes and Nazi war atrocities, which I’m fairly sure never happened in Sykes.

Its’ mischief-making theme, with its frequent overturning of class and social sensibilities and surreal detours, has a lot in common with Cook and Moore’s Bedazzled (not least the pulchritudinous presence of Welch) and feels more like a series of comedy sketches than a movie with a long-form narrative. Its sketchiness is no surprise when one takes into account the influence of its star, Peter Sellers, a man for whom the adjective ‘difficult’ may have been invented; it’s well-documented in Python biographies that the Python sketch ‘The Mouse Problem’ was originally written for this film, but rejected by Sellers because, according to popular anecdote, his milkman didn’t find it funny.

It was Sellers who brought in Cleese and Chapman to assist with scripting The Magic Christian, after his endless, impetuous tinkering had seen the film go through, in John Cleese’s words, “thirteen drafts by the time it got to us… Graham and I managed to put the script into shape in three or four weeks” before further interventions by McGrath (“A very nice man who had no idea about comedy structure”) saw the film “end up as a series of celebrity walk-ons.”
For his part, Ringo Starr is basically playing the version of himself that had been honed in numerous TV interviews and newsreels, not to mention the two Beatles movies, as a laconic, dreamy layabout prone to droll asides and non-sequiturs. It’s the kind of unaffected performance you only get from non-actors with natural charisma who are at ease in front of the camera (his dumb-show when demonstrating facial exercises [“Silent scream… Tiny mouth”] before an increasingly apoplectic Spike Milligan is worth the entrance price alone).

If you are a Python-head, The Magic Christian is also noteworthy as a small stepping stone between their pre-Python TV work for BBC, Rediffusion and Thames, and the Flying Circus. Cleese and Chapman both appear in the two self-written scenes that survived Sellers and Southern’s interventions, the former as a Sotheby’s employee aghast as Ringo vandalises a Dutch master, the latter looking ruggedly handsome as an oarsman for the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, but the film is strewn throughout with the kind of scenarios that became recognisable tropes in Python’s first BBC1 series when it aired later in 1969, most of them retained from Southern’s original novel: Eccentric behaviour in restaurants and art galleries, an upper-class hunting outing that soon gets wildly out of hand, a boardroom meeting full of fawning toadies constantly on the backfoot as they attempt to make the right noises in response to a mogul’s flights of fancy, and a brace of gags playing on drag and homoeroticism (It’s worth bearing in mind that such gags may seem reactionary now, but were transgressive in 1969 – it’s called progress). Another proto-Python element is the casting of broadcasters (in this case, Michael Aspel, Alan Whicker, Harry Carpenter) appearing as themselves, in the same way Python would later employ Reginald Bosanquet, Richard Baker and David Hamilton. Keen-eyed connoseiurs of queer cinema will also appreciate a cameo from Leonard Frey, aka Harold from ground-breaking gay drama The Boys In The Band.

Fabulous Films’ DVD release of The Magic Christian is, to all intents and purposes, a clone of the decade-old Universal mid-price DVD (right down to the packaging and menu screen), and as such offers no tantalising extras, not even an original trailer. The Magic Christian is a real curio of its time, with enough celebrity cameos and ‘60s British Cinema, Beatles and Python connections to appeal to a cross-section of fandoms for cultural and historical interest alone. And it’s good fun: Daft, silly, flawed, patchy, but rarely dull, with Sellers and Starr carrying the film with their infectious personalities alone – for better or worse, a shining example of “They don’t make them like that any more” and “Drugs in the sixties must have been REALLY good

2 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

A time existed when films were made of believable stories about implacable characters in real life’s unfortunate and grinding situations. Hoosiers is one of those films. It doesn’t ask the viewers for excuses, it makes you face along with players all the arduous decisions everyday people have to make despite all adversities crushing down on them. They couldn’t have paired better actors for those roles than Hackman and Hopper. If life gives you lemons go ahead and do what you gotta do. At a time when the Internet didn’t rule over anyone, this movie travelled fast by word of mouth throughout for good reason. The plot is well laid out on the cover of the DVD by Washington Post’s Leonard Martin; but your blood won’t start pumping until you click this masterpiece to play.

5 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Woody's Curve Ball. He had Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment in his mind at the time (although not just this time), the gnawing eating pain of guilt paired with an obsession he was having with the Theme of Luck, and how it can change outcome in an instant. Depending on how the wind blows you may get away with just about anything. He had Scarlett Johansson as his muse at the time and nothing but one of his most superb thrillers came out as a result. If you haven't yet, when people tell you to watch it, they mean it!

6 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

I now have a sample vol.19 tape. The "shows" are half-hour each so each tape is one hour. The base video material is excellent quality. The videotape recording is miserable. It was obviously done with high-speed duplication, and does not track perfectly anywhere on the tape. The DVD series would avoid this problem if you could find it. Tape speed is SP and audio is linear mono, and the tape is not bent.
This volume includes Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Gale Storm singing Isn't It Romantic in a nice setting with a male. In each show there is a movie preview, like The Gang's All Here. I'm not sure but think these were half-hour short films shown in theaters in those days before TV, and in the 1950s were made into TV shows by Al Gannaway.
My copy was a release that used the cover for his Great Country Legends series and pasted a label saying The Big Band Years. Found on ebay.

6 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

Hopkins @ 38 is as sexy as ever.

Bogie miscast as a slime ball bandido!

3 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

For me - this is the human version of 'Bambi'

1 person found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

What a grapefruit; what an ending!

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Although known for it's chilling finale, Rocky Sullivan 'playing' basketball with the Dead End Kids is pure comedic Jimmy Cagney.

4 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

WW II vet, Robert Montgomery, 1946 POV-style of directing must of been a interesting experience for film goers albeit a one-off.

2 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?

If u r a classic film (the Golden Age Of Hollywood) buff and haven't seen this one before - it is must see.

I'll refer to you the DVD case - back image.

BTW: Ms. de Havilland turned 102 on July 1, 2018.

She lives in Paris and I pray she's doing as to be expected!

3 people found this review helpful.   ✔︎ Helpful Review?