Director Robert Aldrich had a knack for depicting outsiders with originality and authenticity. Much like The Dirty Dozen, The Longest Yard is a popular fable about integrity and group unity. It possesses a requisite toughness along with the loneliness that accompanies the outsider status. Compromise is never easy in an Aldrich film. There's always a bitter price to pay. Burt Reynolds, in peak form, plays a former pro quarterback ostracized for shaving points.
Pure dynamite! The Lethal Weapon team has done it again, putting the match to the fuse and putting the WOW! back on screen for Lethal Weapon 4. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover return as buddy cops Riggs and Murtaugh, with Joe Pesci riding comedy shotgun as chatterbox Leo. Murtaugh is still the family man. Riggs is still the gonzo loose cannon - what's this? - family man. His will he/won't he marriage to Cole (Russo) is one of the new wrinkles in this powerhouse crowd-pleaser that also stars comedy favorite Chris Rock and international action star Jet Li.
The characters, action and comedy are back - plus something new. Riggs meets someone he never expected to find: his female alter ego, Lorna Cole (Rene Russo). With this director's cut of Lethal Weapon 3, something newer is added: three minutes of never-before-seen footage! Remember the marina slugfest between Riggs and Murtaugh (Danny Glover)? New scenes between Riggs and Murtaugh's daughter Dianne (Traci Wolfe) add subtext to his fighting-mad protectiveness.
With over seven minutes of previously unavailable scenes, the director's cut of Lethal Weapon is a long overdue present for fans. Riggs' solitary homelife and the tragic loss spurring him to a reckless disregard for his own safety now come into greater focus. We see that recklessness in new scenes underlining the differences between the two cops. Murtaugh, just 50, needs reassurance about his skills at a firing range. Riggs, not caring if he sees another birthday, coolly walks into a schoolyard sniper's field of fire.
A lusty and rousing adventure, this calls to mind those glorious costume dramas produced so capably by the old Hollywood studio system--hardly surprising, in that its title character, a de facto Robin Hood in Old California, provided starring vehicles for Douglas Fairbanks and Tyrone Power, the '50s TV hit, and dozens of serials and features. Zorro, a pop-fiction creation invented by Johnston McCulley in 1918, is given new blood in this fast-moving and engaging version, which actually works as a sequel to the story line in the Fairbanks-Power saga, The Mark of Zorro.
Winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Actress (Julie Andrews), Best Song ("Chim Chim Cher-ee") and Best Visual Effects, Disney's musical masterpiece Mary Poppins has formed an unbreakable bond with audiences of all generations! In her star-making performance, Julie Andrews plays the lovable nanny who flies out of the windy London skies and into the home of a no-nonsense banker and his two mischievous children.
Diane Keaton stars as Carol Lipton, a bored Manhattan housewife who becomes convinced that her nextdoor neighbor has committed a murder. When her skeptical husband, Larry (Allen), rejects the idea, Carol turns to a flirtatious friend (Alda) to help her search for clues. And as their enthusiasm for the case grows so does their interest in each other. Spurred on by jealousy - and by a seductive writer (Huston) who's also excited by the murder mystery - Larry reluctantly joins the chase, only to learn that much more than his marriage is at stake.
Nominated for two Academy Awards in 1979, and considered "one of Allen's most enduring accomplishments" (Boxoffice), Manhattan is a wry, touching and finely rendered portrait of modern relationships set against the backdrop of urban alienation. Sumptuously photographed in black-and-white (Allen's first film in that format), and accompanied by a magnificent Gershwin score, Woody Allen's aesthetic triumph is a "prismatic portrait of a time and a place that may be studied decades hence." --Time Magazine.
You will never find a more chillingly suspenseful, perversely funny, or viciously satirical political thriller than The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon (author of Winter Kills). The film, withheld from distribution by star Frank Sinatra for almost a quarter century after President Kennedy's assassination, has lost none of its potency over time. Former infantryman Bennet Marco (Sinatra) is haunted by nightmares about his platoon having been captured and brainwashed in Korea.
James Bond (Roger Moore) may have met his match in Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), a world-renowned assassin whose weapon of choice is a distinctive gold pistol. When Scaramanga seizes the priceless Solex Agitator energy converter, Agent 007 must recover the device and confront the trained killer in a heart-stopping duel to the death!
