Explicit Ills - Blu Ray [Blu-ray]

• EXPLICIT ILLS BLU-RAY (BLU-RAY DISC)

In the streets of North Philadelphia, the lives of strangers intersect in a bold and moving semi-autobiographical tale that crosscuts between the many people who struggle in the face of poverty, drugs and the human connection.In the streets of North Philadelphia, the lives of strangers intersect in a bold and moving semi-autobiographical tale that crosscuts between the many people who struggle in the face of poverty, drugs and the human connection.

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First Knight (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

• Condition: New
• Format: Blu-ray
• Anamorphic; Color; Dolby; Subtitled; Widescreen

New, in original shrink wrap!1995 had already seen the box-office success of sword-wielding heroes in Rob Roy and Braveheart when along came this glossy revision of the Arthurian legend, in which Lady Guinevere (Julia Ormond) is torn between her love for the noble King Arthur (Sean Connery) and the passionate knight Sir Lancelot (Richard Gere). As the story opens, Guinevere's lands are under attack by the evil knight Malagant (Ben Cross), and she must choose between marriage to Arthur and the security of Camelot, or encouraging the affections of Lancelot, who has heroically rescued her from a potentially lethal attack. Anyone looking for meticulous medieval authenticity won't find it here, but director Jerry Zucker (Ghost) keeps the action moving with exuberant spirit and glorio! us production values. Even if you don't completely believe Richard Gere as a somewhat too-contemporary Lancelot, the performances of Ormond and especially Connery are effortlessly appealing. --Jeff ShannonTogether, Sean Connery, Richard Gere, Julia Ormond (Legends of the Fall, Sabrina) and Jerry Zucker,the director of Ghost, bring you a new vision of King Arthur's Camelot. A vision of breathtaking battles, of heart-pounding courage, of the undeniable love that brought an entire kingdom to its knees... and of the undying passion that made it live forever.1995 had already seen the box-office success of sword-wielding heroes in Rob Roy and Braveheart when along came this glossy revision of the Arthurian legend, in which Lady Guinevere (Julia Ormond) is torn between her love for the noble King Arthur (Sean Connery) and the passionate knight Sir Lancelot (Richard Gere). As the story opens, Guinevere's lands are under attack by the! evil knight Malagant (Ben Cross), and she must choose between! marriag e to Arthur and the security of Camelot, or encouraging the affections of Lancelot, who has heroically rescued her from a potentially lethal attack. Anyone looking for meticulous medieval authenticity won't find it here, but director Jerry Zucker (Ghost) keeps the action moving with exuberant spirit and glorious production values. Even if you don't completely believe Richard Gere as a somewhat too-contemporary Lancelot, the performances of Ormond and especially Connery are effortlessly appealing. --Jeff Shannon

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Heat [Blu-ray]

• When Al Pacino and Robert De Niro squarer off, HEAT sizzles. A tale of a brilliant L.A. cop (Pacino) following the trail from a deadly armed robbery to a crew headed by an equally brilliant master thief (De Niro). Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman co-star. Format: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R Age: 883929073337 UPC:&nb

Vincent is a cool calculating contract killer at the top of his game. Max is a cabbie with big dreams looking for his next fare. This fateful night max will transport vincent on his next mission - one night 5 stops 5 hits & a perfect getaway. Together they find themselves in a non-stop race against time. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/22/2006 Starring: Tom Cruise Jada Picket Smith Run time: 120 minutes Rating: RCollateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but t! hat's just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, after all, and the director's stellar track record with crime thrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent (Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will execute five people in a 10-hour spree. While Stuart Beattie's screenplay deftly combines intimate character study with raw bursts of action (in keeping with Mann's directorial trademark), Foxx does the best work of his career to date (between his excellent performance in Ali and his title-role showcase in Ray), and Cruise is fiercely convincing as an ultra-disciplined sociopath. Jada Pinkett-Smith rises above the limitations of a supporting role, and Mann directs with the conf! idence of a master, turning L.A. into a third major character ! (much as it was in the Mann-produced TV series Robbery Homicide Division). Collateral is a bit slow at first, but as it develops subtle themes of elusive dreams and lives on the edge, it shifts into overdrive and races, with breathtaking precision, toward a nail-biting climax. --Jeff ShannonCOLLATERAL - Blu-Ray MovieCollateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but that's just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, after all, and the director's stellar track record with crime thrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent (Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will execute five people in a 10-hour spree. While Stuart Beattie's screenplay! deftly combines intimate character study with raw bursts of action (in keeping with Mann's directorial trademark), Foxx does the best work of his career to date (between his excellent performance in Ali and his title-role showcase in Ray), and Cruise is fiercely convincing as an ultra-disciplined sociopath. Jada Pinkett-Smith rises above the limitations of a supporting role, and Mann directs with the confidence of a master, turning L.A. into a third major character (much as it was in the Mann-produced TV series Robbery Homicide Division). Collateral is a bit slow at first, but as it develops subtle themes of elusive dreams and lives on the edge, it shifts into overdrive and races, with breathtaking precision, toward a nail-biting climax. --Jeff ShannonCollateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but that's just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, a! fter all, and the director's stellar track record with crime t! hrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent (Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will execute five people in a 10-hour spree. While Stuart Beattie's screenplay deftly combines intimate character study with raw bursts of action (in keeping with Mann's directorial trademark), Foxx does the best work of his career to date (between his excellent performance in Ali and his title-role showcase in Ray), and Cruise is fiercely convincing as an ultra-disciplined sociopath. Jada Pinkett-Smith rises above the limitations of a supporting role, and Mann directs with the confidence of a master, turning L.A. into a third major character (much as it was in the Mann-produced TV series Robbery Homicide Division). Collateral is a b! it slow at first, but as it develops subtle themes of elusive dreams and lives on the edge, it shifts into overdrive and races, with breathtaking precision, toward a nail-biting climax. --Jeff ShannonStudio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 06/07/2011 Run time: 351 minutesStudio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 11/15/2011
Collateral

Collateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but that's just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, after all, and the director's stellar track record with crime thrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent (Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will ! execute five people in a 10-hour spree. While Stuart Beattie'! s screen play deftly combines intimate character study with raw bursts of action (in keeping with Mann's directorial trademark), Foxx does the best work of his career to date (between his excellent performance in Ali and his title-role showcase in Ray), and Cruise is fiercely convincing as an ultra-disciplined sociopath. Jada Pinkett-Smith rises above the limitations of a supporting role, and Mann directs with the confidence of a master, turning L.A. into a third major character (much as it was in the Mann-produced TV series Robbery Homicide Division). Collateral is a bit slow at first, but as it develops subtle themes of elusive dreams and lives on the edge, it shifts into overdrive and races, with breathtaking precision, toward a nail-biting climax. --Jeff Shannon


Days of Thunder

With Days of Thunder, director Tony Scott tried to do for the Indy 500 what he did for ! the U.S. Air Force with Top Gun. But without Top Gun's go-go soundtrack and visual feats, Scott merely ends up with a Tom Cruise vehicle that's out of gas.

Cruise plays (what else?) a cocky, upstart stock-car racer who faces down ruthless racing opponents. Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Cary Elwes, and Randy Quaid do the laps around this movie's tiresome track with Cruise, while director Scott attempts to propel the action along with his trademark visceral, gritty but glamorous visual style.

Days of Thunder is notable, however, as a turning point in Cruise's then one-dimensional career. After this film--having tired even his most devoted fans by playing a bartender, an air force pilot, and a stock-car driver--Cruise was forced to take on real character parts. --Ethan Brown

Minority Report

Set in the chillingly possible future of 2054, Steven Spielberg's Minority Re! port is arguably the most intelligently provocative sci-f! i thrill er since Blade Runner. Like Ridley Scott's "future noir" classic, Spielberg's gritty vision was freely adapted from a story by Philip K. Dick, with its central premise of "Precrime" law enforcement, totally reliant on three isolated human "precogs" capable (due to drug-related mutation) of envisioning murders before they're committed. As Precrime's confident captain, Tom Cruise preempts these killings like a true action hero, only to run for his life when he is himself implicated in one of the precogs' visions. Inspired by the brainstorming of expert futurists, Spielberg packs this paranoid chase with potential conspirators (Max Von Sydow, Colin Farrell), domestic tragedy, and a heartbreaking precog pawn (Samantha Morton), while Cruise's performance gains depth and substance with each passing scene. Making judicious use of astonishing special effects, Minority Report brilliantly extrapolates a future that's utterly convincing, and too close for ! comfort. --Jeff Shannon


Top Gun

Jingoism, beefcake, military hardware, and a Giorgio Moroder rock score reign supreme over taste and logic in this Tony Scott film about a maverick trainee pilot (Tom Cruise) who can't follow the rules at a Navy aviation training facility. The dogfight sequences between American and Soviet jets at the end are absolutely mechanical, though audiences loved it at the time. The love story between Cruise's character and that of Kelly McGillis is like flipping through pages of advertising in a glossy magazine. This designer action movie from 1986 would be all the more appalling were it not for the canny casting of good actors in dumb parts. Standouts include Anthony Edwards--who makes a nice impression as Cruise's average-Joe pal--and the relatively unknown Meg Ryan in a small but memorable appearance. --Tom Keogh


War of the Worlds

Despite super effects, a huge budget, and! the cin ematic pedigree of alien-happy Steven Spielberg, this take on H.G. Wells's novel is basically a horror film packaged as a sci-fi thrill ride. Instead of a mad slasher, however, Spielberg (along with writers Josh Friedman & David Koepp) utilizes aliens hell-bent on quickly destroying humanity, and the terrifying results that prey upon adult fears, especially in the post-9/11 world. The realistic results could be a new genre, the grim popcorn thriller; often you feel like you're watching Schindler's List more than Spielberg's other thrill-machine movies (Jaws, Jurassic Park). The film centers on Ray Ferrier, a divorced father (Tom Cruise, oh so comfortable) who witnesses one giant craft destroy his New Jersey town and soon is on the road with his teen son (Justin Chatwin) and preteen daughter (Dakota Fanning) in tow, trying to keep ahead of the invasion. The film is, of course, impeccably designed and produced by Spielberg's usual crew of A-class talent. The alie! ns are genuinely scary, even when the film--like the novel--spends a good chunk of time in a basement. Readers of the book (or viewers of the deft 1953 adaptation) will note the variation of whom and how the aliens come to Earth, which poses some logistical problems. The film opens and closes with narration from the novel read by Morgan Freeman, but Spielberg could have adapted Orson Welles's words from the famous Halloween Eve 1938 radio broadcast: "We couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the best next thing: we annihilated the world." --Doug Thomas ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER DELIVERS A NAIL-BITING EXCITEMENT AND BOLD ONE-MAN HEROICS AS A LOS ANGELES FIREMAN WHO SEEKS REVENGE AFTER HIS WIFE AND SON ARE KILLED IN A TERRORIST BOMBING. SCHWARZENEGGER TRACKS THE MAN RESPONSIBLE FROM COLOMBIA TOWASHINGTON, D.C. IN A RACE TO STOP HIM BEFORE HE STRIKES AGAIN.Arnold Schwarzenegger's loyal fans get what they want i! n this routine but rousing revenge thriller, which pits the ag! ing acti on star against a Colombian guerrilla terrorist. Schwarzenegger plays a Los Angeles fireman who witnesses the killing of his wife and young son, caused by the terrorist's bombing in a crowded L.A. pavilion. Despite intense scrutiny by FBI and CIA officials, Arnie infiltrates the terrorist's remote jungle compound, enlists the aid of the villain's seemingly trustworthy wife (Francesca Neri), and plots to foil another bombing in Washington, D.C. Director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) maintains adequate plausibility even when Schwarzenegger's survival grows absurdly unlikely, and lively roles for John Turturro and John Leguizamo add welcomed spice to the movie's impressive display of military ordnance. Despite its formulaic plot and Arnold's advancing seniority, Collateral Damage still manages to pack an entertaining punch. --Jeff Shannon When Al Pacino and Robert De Niro squarer off, HEAT sizzles. A tale of a brilliant L.A. cop (Pacino) following the trail f! rom a deadly armed robbery to a crew headed by an equally brilliant master thief (De Niro). Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman co-star.Having developed his skill as a master of contemporary crime drama, writer-director Michael Mann displayed every aspect of that mastery in this intelligent, character-driven thriller from 1995, which also marked the first onscreen pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The two great actors had played father and son in the separate time periods of The Godfather, Part II, but this was the first film in which the pair appeared together, and although their only scene together is brief, it's the riveting fulcrum of this high-tech cops-and-robbers scenario. De Niro plays a master thief with highly skilled partners (Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore) whose latest heist draws the attention of Pacino, playing a seasoned Los Angeles detective whose investigation reveals that cop and criminal lead similar lives.! Both are so devoted to their professions that their personal ! lives ar e a disaster. Pacino's with a wife (Diane Venora) who cheats to avoid the reality of their desolate marriage; De Niro pays the price for a life with no outside connections; and Kilmer's wife (Ashley Judd) has all but given up hope that her husband will quit his criminal career. These are men obsessed, and as De Niro and Pacino know, they'll both do whatever's necessary to bring the other down. Mann's brilliant screenplay explores these personal obsessions and sacrifices with absorbing insight, and the tension mounts with some of the most riveting action sequences ever filmed--most notably a daylight siege that turns downtown Los Angeles into a virtual war zone of automatic gunfire. At nearly three hours, the film qualifies as a kind of intimate epic, certain to leave some viewers impatiently waiting for more action, but it's all part of Mann's compelling strategy. Heat is a true rarity: a crime thriller with equal measures of intense excitement and dramatic depth, g! iving De Niro and Pacino a prime showcase for their finely matched talents. --Jeff Shannon

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From Dusk Till Dawn 3- The Hangman's Daughter Movie Poster Print, 27x41

• Poster Title: From Dusk Till Dawn 3- The Hangman's Daughter
• Size: 27 x 41 inches

The latest bone-chilling installment of From Dusk Till Dawn reveals how this frightening saga all began. Narrowly escaping death, outlaw Johnny Madrid is on the run from the hangman...with the hangman's sensuous daughter Esmeralda by his side. Along with Madrid's gang, Johnny and Esmeralda embark on an adventure filled with colorful and unsavory characters who lead them straight into the fight of their lives. Also featuring Danny Trejo (Machete) and Rebecca Gayheart (Jawbreaker).

Decorate your home or office with high quality posters. From Dusk Till Dawn 3- The Hangman's Daughter is that perfect piece that matches your style, interests, and budget.

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Carandiru

• Director's commentary
• Deleted scenes
• The Making of Carandiru Featurette
• Historical footage

Acclaimed international filmmaker Hector Babenco dramatically captures the powerful intensity of this true story of hope and survival inside Brazil’s most notorious prison. Based on a true story of the day of the Carandiru massacre.The setting is grim, but Carandiru is easily one of Brazilian filmmaker Hector Babenco's most living, thriving works, with scores of powerful performances and an engaging style underscoring the cathartic power of storytelling. Based on a bestselling novel, Carandiru concerns an oncologist (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos) who treats patients at Sao Paulo's House of Detention, a terrible place largely policed from within by longtime prisoners. The doctor is specifically interested in collecting blood samples for an HIV study, but the more prison! ers open up to him, the more compassionate and committed he becomes about their survival. Babenco's episodic structure gives Carandiru a dimension of memory and constant shots of energy, so that even the most horrifying events--drug-related murder, rape, revenge--can't drive this tale into abject misery. Based on actual events, the drama's climactic police raid on the prison (a reconstruction of a 1992 riot called the Carandiru Massacre) is a tour de force. --Tom Keogh

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Casshern Sins: Part 1

• Salvation is the ruin of man and machine.Casshern a cybernetic assassin with no memory of his past awakens in a corrosive wasteland where nothing survives for long. A plague known as the Ruin sweeps across this once-vibrant world, reducing everything in its path to rubble and scattering any chance for salvation. Robots and humans alike or what little remains of them seek vengeance against Casshern

After 50 years of bitter warfare in the late 21st century, a new crisis looms. A threat to the future and the overall existence of mankind. But, there is hope a savior will emerge… Casshern. Casshern is an action-packed, sci-fi thriller that blends Japanamation and manga-inspired live action to create a new hybrid form of filmmaking that is both visually stunning and thought provoking.Kiriya Kazuaki’s spectacular Casshern is an impressive marriage of live action drama and animated effe! cts that, taken together, look like something both very old and very new in cinema. A wild, science fiction tale with an echo or two of Bladerunner, Casshern is set in a dystopian future following a 50-year-long war between Europe and Asia. The latter wins, calling the resulting Eurasia the "Eastern Federation," but the high-tech weapons used in the battle have affected the whole of mankind through widespread devastation and illness. A geneticist whose son, Tetsuya (Yusuke Iseya), has gone off to fight terrorists, promises the military his work on "neo cells" will result in the cultivation of spare human parts for the wounded and afflicted. But two unexpected results occur: a small band of superhuman mutants rise up out of the scientist’s chemical muck, and Tetsuya--killed in battle--is brought back to life with his own superpowers. While the mutants rise up against the human race, Tetsuya, now known as "Casshern," takes them on against a fascinating psychol! ogical backdrop with Oedipal overtones. The film’s look of h! yperreal , pop culture pastiche (in which action often evokes the look of 1930s movie serials blended with a whirl of dreamy, free-associating images) is reaching for the same thing as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. But it is much grander in its effort. --Tom KeoghCasshern â€" a cybernetic assassin with no memory of his past â€" awakens in a corrosive wasteland where nothing survives for long. A plague known as the Ruin sweeps across this once-vibrant world, reducing everything in its path to rubble and scattering any chance for salvation. Robots and humans alike â€" or what little remains of them â€" seek vengeance against Casshern for the life he took and the role he played in their Ruin. A machine built to kill, Casshern murdered the last hope for this world, but now, lost in a future he does not recognize, he will fight to save the dying.Based on the classic Manga. Casshern is Anime meets the matrix in style.Casshern â€" a cybernetic assassin with no memory ! of his past â€" awakens in a corrosive wasteland where nothing survives for long. A plague known as the Ruin sweeps across this once-vibrant world, reducing everything in its path to rubble and scattering any chance for salvation. Robots and humans alike â€" or what little remains of them â€" seek vengeance against Casshern for the life he took and the role he played in their Ruin. A machine built to kill, Casshern murdered the last hope for this world, but now, lost in a future he does not recognize, he will fight to save the dying.Casshern Sins (2008) is a reboot of Tatsuo Yoshida's Casshan Robot Hunter (1973), which was adapted to an OAV in 1993 and a live-action feature in 2004. Sins contains almost nothing of the original story, in which cybernetic hero Casshan fought the robot-soldiers of the evil Braiking Boss in a postapocalyptic landscape. Casshern isn't sure if he's a robot, a human, or a cyber-combination. He has no memories of who he is or w! hat he's done, but everyone he meets insists he killed Luna, "! the Sun Named Moon." As a result, Earth is staggering to its end. All that remains are a few people and three types of robots: human-looking ones who express emotions; puppetlike semi-humans; and big, nasty warrior-bots. In every episode, Casshern performs gymnastic flips and spins as he pounds the evil robots into so much scrap metal. But all the robots are succumbing to "the Ruin," a sort of mechanical plague that causes them to crumble into rusty flakes. As Casshern roams the wastelands and ruined cities with his robot-dog Friender, he hears rumors that Luna may still exist---and any otaku worth their salt can guess which supporting character she'll turn out to be. Director Shigeyasu Yamauchi choreographs the fights scenes skillfully, using a combination of CG and drawn animation to present the acrobatic battles. But Casshern's amnesia means other characters deliver endless expository speeches, trying to untangle the needlessly complicated plot. (Rated TV MA: violence, vio! lence against women, grotesque imagery) --Charles Solomon

(1. At the End of the World, 2. A World Replete with Death Throes, 3. To the Ends of Agony, 4. The Angel of Ruin, 5. The Man Who Killed the Sun Named Moon, 6. Reunited with Fate, 7. The Woman of the Tall Tower, 8. A Hymn of Hope, 9. The Flower That Blooms in the Valley of Ruin, 10. The Man Entrapped by the Past, 11. By One's Calling, 12. Turn the Time Lived to Color)

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Blast From the Past

• BLAST FROM THE PAST (DVD MOVIE)

Studio: New Line Home Video Release Date: 11/09/2010Coasting on the successes of Gods and Monsters and George of the Jungle, Brendan Fraser turns in yet another winning performance in this fish-out-of-water comedy in which Pleasantville meets modern-day Los Angeles, with predictably funny results. Fraser stars as Adam, who was born in the bomb shelter of his paranoid inventor dad (a less-manic-than-usual Christopher Walken), who spirited his pregnant wife (Sissy Spacek, in fine comic form) underground when he thought the Communists dropped the bomb (actually, it was a plane crash). Armed with enough supplies to last 35 years, the parents bring up Adam in Leave It to Beaver style with nary any exposure to the outside world. When the supplies run out, and dad suffers a heart attack, Fraser goes up to modern-day L.A. for some shopping and lon! g-awaited culture shock. More of a cute premise with lots of clever ideas attached than a fully fleshed out story, Blast from the Past is also supposed to be part romantic comedy, as the hunky Adam hooks up with his jaded Eve (Alicia Silverstone) and tries to convince her to marry him and go underground. The sparks don't fly, though, because Silverstone is saddled with the triple whammy of being miscast, playing an underwritten character, and suffering a very bad hairdo. Fraser, however, carries the film lightly and easily on his broad, goofy shoulders, mixing Adam's gee-whiz innocence with genuine emotion and curiosity; only Fraser could pull off Adam's first glimpse of a sunrise or the ocean with both humor and pathos. Also winning is Dave Foley as Silverstone's gay best friend, who manages to make the most innocuous statements sound like comic gems. --Mark Englehart

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Frankie & Johnny Are Married

• In a hilariously misguided attempt to save his rocky marriage, Director Michael Pressman casts his wife opposite hit-shot actor Alan Rosenberg in a new play. But when Rosenberg can t differentiate between stage and real-life love scenes, it s up to Pressman to fix his marriage and keep the show on the road. Frankie & Johnny Are Married is a smart, witty romantic comedy that will touch anyone who s

In a hilariously misguided attempt to save his rocky marriage, Director Michael Pressman casts his wife opposite hit-shot actor Alan Rosenberg in a new play. But when Rosenberg can’t differentiate between stage and real-life love scenes, it’s up to Pressman to fix his marriage and keep the show on the road. Frankie & Johnny Are Married is a smart, witty romantic comedy that will touch anyone who’s been in a relationship.

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Gangster No 1 [Blu-ray]

• UK Import
• Blu-ray
• Region-Free

"Fascinating" (The Hollywood Reporter) and "sensational" (Los Angeles Times), this bold, innovative thriller chronicles the bloody, single-minded climb of a barbarous crime lord to power. Starring Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange), Paul Bettany (A Beautiful Mind), David Thewlis (Naked) and Saffron Burrows (Deep Blue Sea), Gangster No. 1 enters the psyche of an unrepentant mobster and reveals the madman within. Bettany gives "a brilliantly eerie, star-making performance" (American Film Institute) as a ruthless mobster who slugs, claws and kills his way to the top. But when he learns that the former mentor (Thewlis) he put in prison is about to get out, this self-made monster must not only face a man whose life he ruined but the twisted remnants of his own demented conscience as well.This glinting, scalding gangland phantasmagoria offers a sort! of funhouse-mirror refraction of the life and career of a British hooligan so elemental in his right villainy that he's merely identified as "Gangster." The action begins in 1999, with Malcolm McDowell brutishly savoring his eminence as a crime lord; but more of the film is taken up with an extended flashback to 1968, when his youthful self--played by Paul Bettany (but voiced by McDowell during private reveries)--got his start. Bettany's patron is Freddie Mays, "the Butcher of Mayfair" (David Thewlis), a comparatively suave rotter whom "Young Gangster" more or less simultaneously worships, emulates, and craves to see destroyed. Director Paul McGuigan layers the eras and personalities in a kaleidoscope of jagged stylization (occasionally the image shatters like glass, then hellishly reconstitutes itself). The effect is less to tell a proper story than to suspend us in a state of mind--and a homage to McDowell's landmark role in A Clockwork Orange. But it does exert a! n unclean fascination. --Richard T. JamesonWhen a young! gangste r (Paul Bettany) starts working for gang leader Freddie Mays (David Thewlis), known as the Butcher of Mayfair, he dreams of being everything that Freddie is: smooth, sophisticated, impeccably dressed, always with the right women, and driving the fanciest cars. Freddie takes the young gangster (unnamed in the film but listed as Gangster 55 in the credits) under his wing as a potential war with a rival gang starts to heat up. After Freddie falls for Karen (Saffron Burrows), whom 55 had his eye on, the young gangster lies in wait for an opportunity to change things, and when that moment comes, he leaves a bloodbath of betrayal in his wake. Paul McGuigan's GANGSTER NO. 1 is framed by scenes set in the present, where the aging 55, played with delicious villainy by Malcolm McDowell, narrates the tale of his younger self's rise to power in Soho in the late 1960s. Bettany is a revelation as 55, who seems to enjoy a bit of the old ultraviolence now and again; when he tells a potential victim (or even a friend) to look into his eyes, it is hard for the audience as well not to be mesmerised--and scared out of their wits. McGuigan's fast-paced direction includes creative split screens, extreme close-ups, fireballs coming right at the viewer, and a sweeping handheld camera all set to a swinging 1960s score.This glinting, scalding gangland phantasmagoria offers a sort of funhouse-mirror refraction of the life and career of a British hooligan so elemental in his right villainy that he's merely identified as "Gangster." The action begins in 1999, with Malcolm McDowell brutishly savoring his eminence as a crime lord; but mo! re of the film is taken up with an extended flashback to 1968, when his youthful self--played by Paul Bettany (but voiced by McDowell during private reveries)--got his start. Bettany's patron is Freddie Mays, "the Butcher of Mayfair" (David Thewlis), a comparatively suave rotter whom "Young Gangster" more or less simultaneously worships, emulates, and craves to see destroyed. Director Paul McGuigan layers the eras and personalities in a kaleidoscope of jagged stylization (occasionally the image shatters like glass, then hellishly reconstitutes itself). The effect is less to tell a proper story than to suspend us in a state of mind--and a homage to McDowell's landmark role in A Clockwork Orange. But it does exert an unclean fascination. --Richard T. Jameson

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